E-SP

Fall, for me, is a time of new beginnings. Maybe it’s because for so long, it was the start of a new school year. Maybe it’s because the New England air finally sheds its muggy curtain and I can breathe again. Feeling a sense of renewal and looking to make a fresh start at home, I hired a housecleaner to come in and do a deep clean. They scrubbed the markings off my stove dials and tried to overcharge me, but hey, my kitchen sink looks brand new. For the HME industry, fall...

Three hundred and twenty-nine years. That’s how long it took for Elizabeth Johnson Jr.’s name to be cleared after being convicted of witchcraft in Salem, Mass., in 1693.  According to the Boston Globe, state lawmakers agreed to reconsider her case – she was the last accused witch to be cleared – at the behest of an eighth-grade civics class. There followed a bill, an attachment vehicle in the form of a budget bill and, finally, approval.  Sound familiar? That’s...

If there’s anything keeping HME providers, especially those that own their own businesses, awake at night, it’s the ongoing mystery of the empty labor pool. “For six months, we ran ads on all the job boards and got three applications,” Craig Rae, a provider in North Carolina, told me. “I ran ads again yesterday and have my fingers crossed.” Laurie Bachorek, a provider in Texas, has been searching and searching for help, but she says it’s difficult to...

I’m having one of those weeks where I feel like I started in last place and just can’t catch up.  And that was before SCOTUS sent us back 50 years in time.  I was out of the office last week attending VGM’s Heartland Conference, an event I enjoy and usually enjoy blogging about from the actual heartland. Got behind on that, too. But, while it’s tempting to just move forward, I didn’t want to forge ahead without sharing a few quick highlights of...

Rising costs. Inflation. Never-ending pandemic. Never-ending supply chain challenges.  Or, as AAHomecare’s Jay Witter so succinctly summed it: It’s "rough" out there.  He’s not wrong, of course, and I occasionally look at our headlines and think, “Yikes.”  However, as I am reminded every day, week and month, HME providers are a resilient bunch, as evidenced by a quick perusal of headlines in this issue.  There are stories about growth,...

I occasionally miss the hum of working in a busy newsroom – not the clackety-clack of keyboards or the smell of microwaved fish – but that buzz of sounds that melds into a mélange of forward momentum and accomplishments, that sense of Things Are Happening Here.  Such was the case at Medtrade West in April, where attendees flung off two years’ worth of Zoom fatigue and hit the show floor.  It was music to Show Director York Schwab’s ears.  “As...

If I were the betting kind, I’d say Dallas is the odds-on favorite for the inaugural once-a-year Medtrade launching in 2023 as people on the show floor discussed the Big News. A surprising sleeper suggestion: Kansas City. “BBQ,” one attendee told me, pointing out the obvious. No one liked my guess that it would be located in Cincinnati. To clarify: I’m not saying I’m itching to go to Cincinnati, but hey, it’s centrally located is it not? At any rate, the...

My mom and I don’t talk on the phone every week, but we do check in on the important stuff. Take a recent phone call from mom.  Me: Hi Mom, what’s up?   Mom: We’re having a neighborhood margarita contest and I plan to win, so I wanted to get your recipe.  Me: Well, I think I just make them really strong?*  Fast forward to this week and all we seem to be talking about here at HME News is Medicare Advantage. Now, Mom has been talking up a storm about...

Lest you think a reporter’s work life is all glamour and press junkets, think again. It’s often a dull retread through accumulated information to provide context and updates while we wait for the next big story.  Take that old staple we here at HME News refer to as the legislative update. Every month (every week, if she could get it), Editor Liz Beaulieu pesters me for a legislative update, even when it feels like there’s nothing new to report.  I, in turn, pester...

Man, what a long year it’s been. I was reminded of just how long while reading a few news articles in the days right before Christmas warning that Texas was no better prepared for treacherous winter weather now than it was a year ago when a devastating ice storm, which brought snow, ice and single-digit temperatures to a state ill equipped for such conditions, knocked power plants offline and citizens froze to death while Ted Cruz slithered over the border to...