Collins Surgical scales team, offerings

SOUTH EASTON, Mass. – Collins Surgical has nearly doubled its staff to 20 in the past year and has more than tripled its footprint to 10,000 square feet recently, as it expands its role beyond traditional durable medical equipment (DME).

“Our board of directors sat down probably two or three years ago and came up with a whole plan,” said General Manager Kevin Makie. “We call it our three Ps plan: We really wanted to invest in our people, our place and our process, and we've really been putting that to work over the last year or so.”

Growing beyond DME

The larger facility gave Collins Surgical room to add orthotics and prosthetics (O&P) services, alongside DME. It hired an orthotist-prosthetist and built a lab for O&P modifications.

The facility, which also features an expanded showroom and two dedicated fitting rooms, also gave the company room to invest in its back-end operations, adding staff in purchasing, billing, sales support and intake.

“We just didn't have the space to do that before,” said Makie.

Shifting the sales approach

At the same time, the company has been investing in relationships that drive front-end growth, bringing in an outside sales consultant for a six-month program focused on helping the sales team build relationships and better educate clinicians and providers, Makie says.

“We don't necessarily need to sell every single time we talk to them,” he said. “A lot of people call us and say, ‘Hey, we heard this new thing is out with Medicare, can you tell us about it?’ And our sales team does a great job at informing and educating our providers, as well as showing them new products.”

Leveraging AI to increase capacity

Collins Surgical has also invested in offshore support and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to revamp its workflows, but Makie says automation has increased, not reduced, the need for staff.

By accelerating order processing, AI is expanding the company’s capacity to serve patients while maintaining its service standards, he says.

“To us, it’s been the exact opposite,” he said. “We’ve seen all of our growth because of AI.”