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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?

The quick read:

1. Medicare reduces reimbursement about 35% November 15
2. CMS spokesperson Ellen Griffith said “Medicare was paying for the equipment at a much higher rate than what it was being sold for on the market”
3. Cara Bachenheimer — vice president of government affairs for Invacare, the largest U.S. manufacturer of power wheelchairs — said, “Most suppliers do not have the kind of margins to sustain these cuts.”
4. Jim Greatorex — president of Black Bear Medical, the largest supplier of home medical equipment in the Northeast — said, “These prices are just absurd. This policy change is motivated strictly by saving money and does not take into effect the devastating effect it will have on the consumer, supplier or manufacturer”

[Read more →]

Following on from the report yesterday on the new dramatic cut in CMS reimbursement for power chairs: More Bad News For The Powered Wheelchair Industry AND The Powered Wheelchair Consumer

RAMP - Restore Access to Mobility Partnership issued the following statement:

Huge Cuts in Medicare Mobility Equipment Prices Will Restrict Access for Medicare Beneficiaries (US Newswire)

“Reimbursement Cuts of 21 Percent to 41 Percent Will Force Lay-offs, Put Suppliers Out of Business”.

The point from my perspective is the impact of access to critical healthcare for consumers. There is no doubt that irrespective of layoffs etc, this is is huge blow to people who often need help with this life supporting and enhancing technology the most.
[Read more →]

It seems to be common sense that innovation is one of the most intelligent ways to flee the price war in the rehab industry. In two weeks we all will see a lot of innovative products at Europe’s biggest rehab show in Duesseldorf. But is the common sense also proven truth? I doubt as far as Germany is concerned.
Firstly, innovation is a brought term. I will use a pragmatic approach and take “any new product “ as an innovation. This includes also products which are only renewed in order to keep the pricelevel by adding additional features. Not very innovative from a technical point of view, but thecompanies have invested R&D capacity in these products. The goal was show something new to protect/enlarge the profitability.

On the German market the most innovative company over the last 7 years is without any doubt Invacare if you count newly launched products per year. There is also no doubt that it was not the most successful company. The lowest level of innovation during the same period showed Sunrise. Among the big players in Germany it is certainly the one which protected its position best.
[Read more →]

Just last week RAMP - Restore Access to Mobility Partnership - who’s members comprise American Association for Homecare; Invacare Corporation; the MED Group; Mobility Products Unlimited, LLC; and Pride Mobility issued a press release stating among other things

RAMP welcomes the additional assurances from CMS that down-coding will not occur, but we emphasize that several policy revisions are still necessary, and the industry must thoroughly evaluate the yet-to-be released pricing information for the new policy and process to be successful.

Industry heavyweight Mal Mixon CEO of Invacare was quoted as saying “We have made progress…CMS has engaged in a constructive dialogue with stakeholders”, while Dan Meuser, President of Pride USA was quoted “The resolution of this issue exemplifies what can be accomplished when CMS and stakeholders work together”.

Also last week - Mike Hammes - CEO of Sunrise Medical, in an editorial in HME News entitled - Sunrise CEO tells providers to ‘face reality’ - went on to appeal to homecare providers to enlist the support base of consumers in opposing unreasonable CMS plans.

Well it seems the the glimmer of optimism was somewhat short lived. [Read more →]

Invacare announced today that they were consolidating their sales organizations in the second largest homecare market in the world - Germany.

The new organization will be known as Invacare Aquatec.

Following the acquisition 2 years ago of Domus, the Aquatec and Invacare organizations in Germany had remained in separate locations (one in the north and one in the south). Standard Invacare homecare products moved to Aquatec shortly after the acquisition - but now the original Invacare Company (save for some power wheelchair manufacturing and a few functions) is being moved to the Aquatec headquarters in Isny (near Munich). Isny of course is home to the worlds leading bathlift companies.

There will no doubt be savings including a headcount reduction.

To readers of this blog this will be no surprise as the German market continues like most of the world to cut deeply into reimbursement benefits.

By the way it seems to me that centralizing the sales and marketing activities could also bring some customer benefits…

You may want to read the recent related posts:

German Homecare Market - An Insiders Perspective - Adrian Thyssen

Who Is My Customer? - a Story of Achievement in Germany - Adrian Thyssen