Powering Back

It may be the New Year, but 2003 is shaping up to be the same old story for the power wheelchair market, with some new twists.

The market for power wheelchairs continues to face funding obstacles and encroaching foreign competition, not to mention an increasingly educated consumer base, a high claim-denial rate and a ludicrous days sales outstanding average, according to industry officials.

“The foreseeable future holds the same obstacles that are currently faced in the power wheelchair market,” says Barry Steelman, marketing manager for Permobil. “If manufacturers are forced to produce less-expensive, possibly cheaper product, then the next obstacle will be a service issue. With cheaper products comes less money for the dealer to service the products properly, and drop-shipping products to end-users will only compound this problem. The need to have qualified dealers and rehab professionals involved in the entire process of prescribing a medical device is, and always will be, key to the future of a healthy power wheelchair market.”

K0011: A Bright Spot

While most of the power wheelchair market struggles with a myriad of obstacles to overcome in 2003, one bright spot in the market is the K0011 power wheelchair. “I'm not sure about how much of the market is high-end rehab and how much of it is K0011s, but I'd have to believe the K0011s are a big portion of the pie,” says Jack Sheehan, director of sales and marketing for Bruno Independent Living Aids.

Unlike some other segments of the power wheelchair market, the K0011 market doesn't struggle with reimbursement rates, according to Sheehan, who believes there couldn't be a better time to be selling K0011s.

However, overuse in the market could make things difficult on the reimbursement end, warns DuWayne Kramer, president of Leisure-Lift. “The market is in flux right now, with some overuse, [and] with one supplier providing over 50 percent of the K0011 claims in the United States,” Kramer says. “This ‘Medicare Mining’ approach is unfair to the rank-and-file DME dealers and their local customers. As a result, reimbursement will continue to be a problem, and K0011 funding will become increasingly difficult in the second half of 2003, in some regions of the country.”

The High-End Market

While the K0011 market might be considered the hot spot in the power wheelchair market, the high-end rehab side of the market, though growing, is facing numerous challenges.