With regulatory pressures making for a rocky road, providers are trying to find ways to keep their businesses in the fast lane. As competitive bidding threatens to drop the ceiling on margins and perhaps force providers to almost reinvent how they do business, finding new efficiencies, cutting costs and discovering and maximizing new business opportunities are the name of the game.

Besides, when you get right down to it, providers simply have too much to do when it comes to running their business. From servicing customers, to staying on top of billing, to getting new patients, they are already redlining.

“The biggest thing we’re hearing from the providers is ‘I want to focus on patient care and growing our referral basis,’” says Dave Cormack, CEO of network-based HME systems provider Brightree Inc., which recently signed a 10-year agreement with the VGM group. “They say, ‘Competitive bidding updating prices tables, etc. -- It’s engulfing us.’”

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An HME Provider's Guide To Increasing Revenue

With declining reimbursements, competitive bidding and growing activity costs, HME providers have been given an implied ultimatum: change with the times or get left behind.

Today’s market is quite different than it was in the yester years when providers relied solely on reimbursements from

Medicare and other third-party payors. In an effort to offset some of the Medicare cuts, enlightened providers are looking to cash sales as the key to survival in the changing face of the durable medical equipment industry.

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Two new products promise to help providers check a patient's
Medicare eligibility with ease.

WEST SPRINGFIELD, Mass. –Until this year, checking a patient’s Medicare eligibility more than occasionally proved so cumbersome, time-consuming and costly that, like most providers, All-State Medical often saidforget it.“It wasn’t worth it,” said Marcus Suess, president of the Tampa, Fla., HME. “The risks of being denied were acceptable to us for the time spent on the phone.”All that changed when Suess began using Diabco’s real-time Medicare eligibility software, Me-First. Diabco unveiled its product at Medtrade Spring in March. Noble House introduced a similar Medicare eligibility program in January.

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DELRAY BEACH—Diabco, Inc. has announced the introduction ofME-First, a real-time Medicare eligibility software system. With it,providers will get an immediate response to determine patients’Medicare eligibility and what portion of their deductible remainsunpaid.Typical response time is less than ten seconds a patient. ME-Firstidentifies primary payors and shows home-health episodes and HMOs,said president Edward Kutt. “Patient Medicare eligibility is no longer aconstant, especially since Part D. It is now more important than ever toverify insurance before your bill, every time you bill,” he said.