HIDA '99 Chicago Home care will be one of the Health Industry Distributors Association's top priorities for the year 2000, its incoming chairman, Dan Moskowitz, told attendees at HIDA/99, its annual trade show and education forum.

While the show's primary focus is on serving the needs of hospital suppliers and health care providers, the number of exhibitors and attendees involved in HME is on the rise, he said.

"Our customers have needs-particularly home care companies," Moskowitz said. "They have been hurt by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and we are going to look for avenues and options-under the guidance of the Home Care Council-to help them."

About 5,400 industry players attended the show Oct. 9-11, an increase of more than 1,000 over 1998, officials said. Of those, 2,600 were distributor dealers, double last year's number. In all, 375 manufacturers exhibited their products and services in 550 booths.

Several exhibitors took home awards from the show. The Ralph J. Pickell "Best of Show" Booth Awards honored manufacturers with outstanding booths. Sunrise Medical received the Best Home Care Booth Award; Mallinckrodt Inc. won the Most Innovative New Product/Program Award; and Mabis Healthcare took first place in the Multiple Booth Exhibit Division. The Frank M. Rhatigan Awards recognized the development of exceptional marketing materials by manufacturers and other suppliers to medical products distributors. First-place winners included Hausman Industries in the catalog category and Crown Therapeutics in the price list category.

NAHC Expo San Diego Educational programs featuring an assortment of guest speakers ranging from Deepak Chopra to Carl Hammerschlag highlighted the 18th annual National Association for Home Care meeting in conjunction with the 1999 Homecare Expo Oct. 9-13 in San Diego. About 4,000 people attended, a slight increase over 1998, according to NAHC officials. In total, 200 manufacturers exhibited their products and services in 450 booths.

One of the meeting's most popular seminars was an update on the prospective payment system for home care. Mediated by Bill Dombi, director of NAHC's Center for Health Care Law, the presentation provided up-to-date information about the proposed regulation. An objective, Dombi said, was encouraging members to start looking at areas that would need to be changed under the PPS. Those areas would include not only reimbursement, he said, "but how they would have to adjust their operations to address information and certain systems needs, as well as the coordination of clinical and financial components of their organization into cohesive units so that they can manage within the PPS."

NAHC also set up a cyber cafe at the meeting and encouraged attendees to send e-mail messages to members of Congress to voice their support for home care issues. NAHC also announced the initiation of its Home Care and Hospice Headline News Service, an online publication (www.nahc.org) that compiles the day's top news and business information for home care and hospice providers.