11 Voices, 34 Wheels

If you are a mobility equipment provider, you undoubtedly work in one of the most dynamic segments of home health care. Changing legislation, vague policies and insufficient reimbursement have become the norm rather than the exception. But you keep doing what you do for one reason: your customers.

Your mobility customers depend on you for a lot more than equipment. They want your advice and need your expertise as if their lives depend on it — and they do. Caroline Signore, a doctor and researcher at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., says the wear and tear on her power wheelchair is evidence of her dependence on it. For Signore and others, their “wheels” are a ticket to independence that home medical equipment providers make possible when they are knowledgeable, attentive and respectful.

As you read through their comments, remember that each of these people is your customer. Some have high-profile lives that make them representatives for people with disabilities. You may recognize several as working within HME. Other names will not be as familiar.

But what they have in common — the need for a wheelchair — is exactly what should not bond them together. The use of a wheelchair, these users say, should not define their abilities or interests any more than the color of their hair.

John Collins, a judge in Glenwood Springs, Colo., and a paraplegic since 1994, says he actually forgets he is in a wheelchair. “My normal business and my normal life don't have anything to do with my disability,” he says.

Most of these individuals are not Medicare or Medicaid patients but are covered by private insurance. And they represent a growing population of wheelchcair users who are active, educated and willing to spend disposable income on the equipment and accessories that will help them do as they please.

Read on for more thoughts from these mobility customers on this industry — and what they think about you.

Seller Beware: Educated Customer Alert

Caroline Signore and Nash

Occupation: Post-doctoral fellow, Division of Epidemiology, Statistics, and Prevention Research, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md.

Diagnosis: C-6-7 quadriplegic

Years in a Wheelchair: 9

“If I had not had the knowledge and the ability to dissect what was going on, I'm sure I would have ended up with all kinds of stuff that was not right for me.”