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Do you know if your service department is profitable?

Do you know if your service department is profitable?

In the heyday of home medical equipment, providers rarely worried about the profitability of their service departments. Not anymore, especially when it comes to power wheelchairs, says Dick Fuller.

Fuller, who has 27 years of industry experience, mostly with power wheelchairs, started a consulting company recently to help providers restructure their service departments to make it easier to determine their profitability.

I don't mean to imply that the way we used to run service departments was wrong,” he said. “It's just that the business model has shifted. We used to make a pretty decent margin (selling equipment) and off of that margin, we made sure the customer was well cared for. We're dancing to a different tune now.”

The power wheelchair market has been hit by reimbursement cuts totaling about 37% since 2006. As a result, providers are now worried about a lot, including their service departments.

See the January issue for the rest of the story.

Liz Beaulieu

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