Technology management for home care providers
Specialty distributors can help providers introduce innovative technologies
By Mark Thill
(Mark Thill is communications director for IMDA, the association for specialty distributors, based in Mission, KS.)
It’s no news to home care providers that their market is facing a classic dilemma. Just as the benefits of home care have become obvious to just about everyone, so have its costs. Home care providers are feeling the results. So are their suppliers.
Even as manufacturers make dramatic improvements in temperature, sleep, oxygen and asthma therapy, the government recoils at the price tag. Even as ventilators, CPAPs and other devices become more sophisticated, policymakers struggle to stanch the flow of dollars out of government coffers. And even as home care providers use new technology to extend their reach into the workplace and to transform managed care into managed health, dollar signs threaten to block the view of would-be visionaries.
Yet the flow of new technology into the marketplace will continue, because patients and their clinicians demand it. Certainly this can’t occur at any cost. Technology must pass muster with payers as well as providers. Its developers must answer two devilishly simple questions: Does it improve outcomes? Is it cost-effective?
Indeed, home care providers are entering a new era. To "managed care" and
"managed health," now they must add "managed technology" to their
lexicon.
The specialty distributor
But managing technology is easier said than done. Faced with the pressing demands of day-to-day operations as well as tight-fisted payers, how can they separate the wheat from the chaff? How do they know which technologies are truly transformational, and which are of the "bells and whistles" variety?
Clinical and trade journals as well as trade expositions will always be indispensable sources of information, of course. But there is another one -- the specialty distributor.
Specialty distributors have focused on bringing innovative technologies to market for years. Unlike general-line distributors, specialty companies carry relatively few lines to market, hence they get to know each of them intimately. Their representatives are technically sophisticated and can talk the clinical talk with customers.
Although the logistics capabilities of most specialty distributors are excellent – next-day delivery is the norm, not the exception – these companies believe their greatest value to providers is their knowledge of how innovative technology can help them improve patient care, cut costs and generally excel in a tough environment.
Consider some of the technologies that members of IMDA – the Mission, KS-based association for specialty distributors – have brought to market in the past. When first introduced, most were on the cutting edge of technology. Today they represent the standard of care:
Not only do specialty distributors present and sell innovative technologies such as these, but they train providers on how to reap the maximum clinical and economic benefits from them. It is this niche – introducing new technologies and inservicing clinical users on how to take advantage of them -- that IMDA members continue to claim as their own.
Both ends of the supply chain
Truly effective distributors bring value not only to providers, but to manufacturers as well. In this way, they can help bring down costs for both.
One manufacturer – Intelligent Medical Systems, inventor of the tympanic thermometer – used specialty distributors to bring its product to market in the 1980s. The company’s former vice president of sales and marketing, Ron Benincasa, explains that specialty distributors brought the following to Intelligent Medical (which was acquired by Sherwood Medical in the early 1990s):
Benincasa’s company experienced over 200% sales growth, zero bad debt and $17 million gross sales in its final year before selling the line to Sherwood Medical, all without hiring an outside sales force. When a manufacturer realizes benefits such as these, it can and does pass them on to the provider.
IMDA member Richard Manley of CVC Inc., Arlington, Tx, points out that the keys to a successful manufacturer/distribution relationship include a truly unique product that addresses a need in the marketplace, a focus on cost reduction and improvements in patient outcomes, a sales and marketing team that knows how to bring such products to market, and dynamic ownership and management to lead the way.
If these elements are in place, the manufacturer, distributor, provider and patient all win.
The specialty niche
IMDA members recognize the valuable services that large, general-line distributors bring to providers. But specialty distributors focus their energies elsewhere.
According to IMDA member Steve Picheny of Stepic Medical, Long Island City, NY, "We bring to the table a high-touch, knowledgeable, technical sell. We bring new products from small and large companies into the market earlier than anyone else. We keep those products in the market as long as they can be differentiated from others. And we provide support to clinicians and to manufacturers from Day 1."
Nobody is naïve enough to believe that new technology will receive a free pass in tomorrow’s health care market. At the same time, who really wants to stop the flow of new devices and equipment that can improve the quality of people’s lives while cutting overall costs?
U.S. medicine has a love affair with technology. Working together, home care providers, specialty distributors, manufacturers and payers can and will find a way to temper the flame with clinical and cost-effectiveness data, to the benefit of all.
For information on IMDA, contact Communications Director Mark Thill at (847) 255-0716, or at markthill@home.com. The organization’s website is www.imda.org.
From Home Health Care Dealer Magazine.
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