An interesting DME Article

Interesting development.

It's unclear to me how this company intends to meet the requirement that a physician prescribe the use of cpap. Surely they are not meeting this requirement by a simple questionnaire.

At the same time, I am concerned that the prescribing physician is attached to the clinic. This makes me wonder how many people will be diagnosed as apneic solely because the store is not meeting its sales-targets.

Finally, we hear so much about DME's who operate on razor thin profit margins. If that is true, then how is it that this company thinks it can survive while having a typically-much-higher overhead in what appears to be a shopping mall. I wouldn't expect any cut-rate prices for equipment from this store!

Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of home tests and dislike the idea of needing a prescription for equipment. I just don't like the idea of having to get a prescription from a doctor who had such a clear conflict of interest.

There's an old saying: give a kid a hammer and everything's a nail. In this case, the kid is a sleep doctor and the nail is a storefront that tests for apnea and sells cpaps, too!

Yeah.. I know where that mall is. I used to drive the 402L which stops right there. They were not kidding when they said that is a high end shopping center. Agreed, that is an interesting article. At least if nothing else... that could help raise awareness.

My DME is a small, Spartan endeavor in an older strip mall, not a very tony location.
They are a hole in the wall just around the corner from a Dollar Tree. I think that means "low budget".
The owner spun off from his family's Mom&Pop business.

chunkyfrog wrote:My DME is a small, Spartan endeavor in an older strip mall, not a very tony location.
They are a hole in the wall just around the corner from a Dollar Tree. I think that means "low budget".
The owner spun off from his family's Mom&Pop business.

no wonder you like 'em, they've a need to treat their customers well, so they'll keep coming back, they don't have the volume to enable them to not give a shit

They only order full data machines, and handle a lot of oxygen.
Unlike Crapria, the place is no frills, except the ones that matter.

chunkyfrog wrote:They only order full data machines, and handle a lot of oxygen.
Unlike Crapria, the place is no frills, except the ones that matter.

oxygen is good, I've become quite the fan of it... I'd prefer not to have to do without, methinks.

I kinda like no frills... means less of my money is going to their showyness

I stopped by the Park Meadows Mall today and checked out the new Somnia sleep store...........what a joke!

its mostly bedding, scented candles, and sleep sound machines...........one little section with all ResMed stuff like maybe six to nine different current masks, two AirSense machines. The two ladies that were showing customers stuff were totally clueless. Don't bother with this place.........my guess they'll be out of business in less than a year.

TangledHose wrote:I stopped by the Park Meadows Mall today and checked out the new Somnia sleep store...........what a joke!

its mostly bedding, scented candles, and sleep sound machines...........one little section with all ResMed stuff like maybe six to nine different current masks, two AirSense machines. The two ladies that were showing customers stuff were totally clueless. Don't bother with this place.........my guess they'll be out of business in less than a year.

To me, that is where they need to focus. Get some trained folks in there, and those "two ladies" refer anyone who can get past the scented candles, to them. Then they might actually have something.

It does not sound like a true moneymaking venture, but maybe ResMed is following the Apple Store model, and raising awareness on something that goes undiagnosed and untreated 90% of the time, with 12 million potential customers out there dozing away while being strangled in their sleep 50-70 times an hour every night.

Raising awareness is a lot harder if you are in a cheap strip mall and have no passing traffic. Their customers are going to be pass-by, walk-by traffic in shopping mode, not someone getting up and saying "I think I'll drive around aimlessly today and try to find a sleep store in some crappy strip mall in the dangerous part of town."

So maybe they have thought that part through, and figure the location cost is part of the cost of doing business effectively. Maybe they are only trying to raise awareness, and making a profit on the store is secondary. If the store disappears and pops up in a different mall every six months whack-a-mole style, we could probably draw that conclusion.

The "sleep medicine community" should be comforted, not threatened, because raising awareness only helps their business in the long run. Also, while they seem to have things in place to prevent this, I really wonder how much harm CPAP therapy could do to someone that really does not need it and was simply misdiagnosed, other than to make them think they are solving their problem when their problem might actually be something else (and licensed sleep docs err in that direction occasionally anyway).

But bottom line, I don't care how successful they will be because they are not spending my money on this enterprise, and I would not be spending any money there (I might browse to check out the "two ladies", I guess). Any increase in awareness, even at the expense of a company that I do not own going belly-up, is a good thing in my view. That's one less person falling asleep at the wheel and pointing their stupid ridiculously oversized overweight Hummer over 4 lanes of oncoming traffic, at my car.

i don't think many insurance companis will deal with them. that will kill the business.