Invacare offers Bonafide software solution

ELYRIA, Ohio - In what looks like a match made in heaven, Invacare announced a sales and marketing agreement April 1 with Bonafide Management Systems, an HME software company based in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Bonafide, which has successfully developed products for other markets in the past (music video stores and hospital Part A claims filing), has exhibited at Medtrade for several years, but had grown its HME client base only modestly and needed help with sales and marketing. Invacare, on the other hand, has a large sales and marketing team that "touches the entire national customer base, and we wanted to offer something like this," said David Kazan, vice president of sales and marketing for Invacare's Service Business Group. "We insisted that the end user is our customer-not Invacare," said Wayne Bailey, Bonafide's director of marketing and sales. "We said that we'd do this with Invacare, but that anyone-whether it's Pride, their nemesis, or whoever their competitors are-can have their catalogues built in. You know what Invacare said? They said, 'Our whole deal is to keep the end user, the provider, in business, and we want them to be able to shop anywhere.'" Bonafide's software is a secure Web-based solution or application service provider (ASP). It handles "all the activities a provider engages in," including intake, online ordering (thus the need for product catalogues), delivery, inventory and denial management, Kazan said. "It's all about automation and the need to be more efficient, to reduce waste, to improve collections-all that sort of thing," he said. In addition to Bonafide, Invacare's suite of services include repair programs for consumer power wheelchairs, wheelchair electronics and concentrators. It also offers equipment replacement parts, both OEM and aftermarket. HME