Posts from — October 2006

New RAMP report and Invacare, Respironics and Apria announce latest quarter earnings:

A new RAMP report has just been issued by the Power Wheelchair Industry:

Here’s the headline:

Government Data Refutes CMS Claims that Utilization of Mobility Benefit Is on the Rise - Utilization Sharply Declined Since 2003; No Support for CMS Claims of Increases.

Basically the industry is saying that CMS (Medicare) has got the numbers all wrong in terms of the growth in numbers of powered products over the years. Industry contends that the increases were in the years leading up to 2003 due to technology advances while also admitting that there were some provider organizations that had been involved in some fraudulent activity.

Full report here

Invacare announced their earnings today and while EPS had grown sequentially from prior quarter (excluding one time events), profits were down from prior year and the firm was guiding lower largely due to reimbursement insecurities (see above). The stock closed 5.3% down at 22.53. Full release here.

Respironics saw profits rise based on domestic sleep products and international revenues however they missed analysts expectations. They also guided revenues lower. The stocked took a hit and closed more than 7% down at 35.69. Full release here:

Apria said today that its earnings were flat (beating analyst estimates), and Q3 revenues were up 4%. Apria affirmed guidance but acknowledged that Medicare reimbursement cuts would affect margins. The stock closed up over 5% at 22.04.

Did you notice that both Invacare and Respironics reported positively on International?

FDA seeks comments on BGMS (essentially diabetic products using fingerstick method) Total Product Life Cycle for Portable Invasive Blood Glucose Monitoring Systems (BGMS) - Draft Guidance for Industry and FDA Staff

While re-intervention rates at one year were similar between arch rivals Johnson and Johnson and Boston Scientific, this study claims that Taxus® has statistically superior performance in the fast growing diabetic population.

Boston Scientific Corporation - TAXUS® Performance Superior to Cypher® in Diabetic Patients in Head-to-Head Study

Reha has now come and gone again and I have decided to choose a winner.

Handicare is the winner, and this is the reason.

Less than a year after acquiring

Movingpeople , Handicare has done a great job of presenting one face to their European customer. Their booth was simple and clearly branded. In addition and probably most important was that their employees represented their newly merged company with passion.

Besides the people, Scandinavian and Dutch companies have a strong commitment to closely match product with “real” customer needs and add value.  Handicare is no exception. Customer (consumer, dealer, reimbursement agency etc) needs first - the China gold rush second - if you get what I mean.

I first wrote about this in November last year.

Here is also a related editorial

The Return Of The Homecare Vikings

Oh, I also wanted to mention Otto Bock who did a noteworthy job of presenting mobility and lifestyle enhancing products.

With all the reimbursement issues going on notably in the US right now, you cannot help wonder if these issues would have been at least partially mitigated if the manufacturers had focused (like Otto Bock) more on what these products really mean to consumers as opposed to the usual manufacturer/ dealer rhetoric.

In the latest HME News there is an interesting, if not curious write-up concerning the Office of Inspector General issuing a (its not clear) warning to an alleged wheelchair manufacturer that “providing dealers (my words) with advertising and reimbursement advice may not be a good idea - allegedly because of the possibility of “kickbacks”.”

Well this is interesting from a couple of perspectives. One is that manufacturers today represent to industry openly that they champion their (reimbursement) cause with the government, and that “cooperative” advertising that helps drive customers to dealers is also done openly on TV etc.

The authorities go on to state; “There is a substantial risk that the proposed arrangement would be a disguised kickback scheme having as one of it purposes the generation of business payable by a federal healthcare care program for the manufacturer.”

It’s good of the “manufacturer” to share this warning with industry…

From an ethics point of view a lot of us were brought up to believe that if you were confident enough about your position and published it on the front page of your newspaper you were probably not doing anything wrong.

Seems this may not be the case here.

(Right or wrong, for better or worse there are several major countries in the world that don’t seem to have an issue with the above practice) - do you?

JANUVIA(TM) (sitagliptin phosphate) is coming soon

If approved, JANUVIA would potentially be the first in a new class of oral medications (DPP-4 inhibitors) that enhances the body’s own ability to lower blood sugar (glucose) when it is elevated.

Feds Warn Of Counterfeit Diabetes Tests counterfeit blood glucose test strips reportedly being sold in the United States (consumeraffairs.com)