Janknitz wrote:Most CPAP users are not educated about their own therapy. They go in to the DME, accept whatever the DME hands them, and either use it without complaint whether it's working for them or not or don't use it at all--that's why there's a very high failure rate for CPAP therapy.
WE are the execption. I'll wager that only a very few people ever walk into their DME's store asking for particular machines, knowling how to adjust them, knowing how to access data and what it tells them. Because we are so few and far between, the DME's can get away with handing people bricks that may or may not work for the patient, but certainly enhance the DME's bottom line.
It is also rare to find a DME that cares a single whit about patient success with CPAP, as long as the compliance period is met. Why should they when it costs them money to do so? Money that is included in the reimbursement they receive from Medicare and other insurers, but if they can pocket that money instead of spend it, why not???
Amen, amen to what Janknitz wrote!
Especially this part: "
I'll wager that only a very few people ever walk into their DME's store asking for particular machines --"
And THAT is what amazes me the most about the resistance (and sometimes outright hostility) those few and far between are met with by some DMEs. When the vast majority of newly diagnosed do simply "
go in to the DME, accept whatever the DME hands them, and either use it without complaint whether it's working for them or not or don't use it at all -- " you'd think it would be
no big deal to the DME to happily accommodate that one in a thousand (ten thousand?) special request. After the DME recovers from the initial shock of witnessing one cow out of a vast herd stand up on its hind legs and speak English, that is.
Surely those few-and-far-between specific machine requests wouldn't have any real impact on the bottom line of a DME's profits. The DME would still be gaining a new customer who will be making regular repeat purchases via the insurance replacement schedule, for years to come.
I think a lot of DME resistance happens for ego reasons. A lowly "patient" is not simply accepting what a little demi-god wearing a smock hands him/her or tells him/her? Unthinkable. Hackles go up.
