Operations
2009 HME Industry Salary & Benefits Survey: Cold Comfort
It's the classic good news-bad news situation for home medical equipment providers: Salaries seem to be holding steady — but that's for employees who have kept their jobs.
Over the past 12 months, nearly one in three HME providers (31 percent) participating in HomeCare's Salary & Benefits Survey have had layoffs.
That stat and others across the survey show without a doubt that the industry's tumultuous conditions, worsened by the nation's sputtering economy, have extracted a heavy toll.
Take employee benefits, for example. Fifty-seven percent of providers reported they had made changes to their company's health care plans in the past year: 35 percent changed/modified plans to save the company costs, 16 percent have done so to save employees costs and 27 percent have increased employee premiums.
In a second telling example, 84 percent of providers in the magazine's 2008 survey gave employees raises averaging 5 percent. This year, the average raise was also 5 percent, but only 53 percent of providers handed them out.
| Over the past 12 months for providers in HomeCare's survey group |
|
|---|---|
| 31% | have laid off employees |
| 38% | have frozen salaries |
| 33% | have left positions vacant |
| 57% | have made changes to health benefits |
| 14% | have reduced employees' work hours |
| 53% | gave raises vs. 84% in 2008 |
| 29% | have dropped bonuses |
| 26% | have reduced commissions |
Thirty-eight percent of providers in the 2009 survey group have frozen salaries, another 13 percent have reduced them and 14 percent have reduced the hours of some employees. Thirty-three percent have left an open position vacant. Twenty-nine percent have dropped bonuses for some (16 percent) or all (13 per-cent) employees. Twenty-six percent have reduced commissions.
The reasons for all this are exactly what you might expect. Here's a representative sample of answers providers gave when we asked why they had laid off staff, cut back hours and/or reduced salaries or commissions:
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"Because Medicare allowables have been so cut and coverage items have been deleted. Also, the new regulations for oxygen are killing us."
