Ted Wade

Ted Wade has devoted his working life to the home health care software industry. After a 2-year departure from the industry, Wade is now the founder of Sterling Star Corp, maker of StarPro (www.sterlingstar.com). Dealer/ Provider asked him to share his perspective on the market’s roots and where it will go in the future.

Q What are your impressions of the health care industry?
A  I have lived and breathed health care software for my entire data processing career, now spanning 37 years. Being involved from the beginning, I feel that Medicare has done a wonderful job. Many events have directly contributed to maintaining the cost of health care for the individual, even for non-Medicare patients, and for the development of the economy and many new businesses.

I feel that the entire industry of health care and health care software is currently in a very transient stage. How business is being conducted will go through significant changes over the next 5 years. These changes will be mandated by health care regulations and acceptance of new technology.

Q What are your observations upon returning to the market?
A My first impression is that it is ever-changing. Before, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was “something in the future.” Now it is a reality. HIPAA will put us on the right road to standardization of electronic media and provide the foundation for data security and integrity.

The DME business is still an industry of independent business owners, and I hope it remains so. However, DME will tumble to the power of the large business appetite if it does not police itself and improve the level of professionalism and the way business is done.

I think the changes in the past 5 years have improved the caliber of the DME owner/manager. Successful DME owners/managers must be professional, keen-minded, adaptive to change, and progressive. They must maintain a high level of awareness of where they are, where they are going, and what their competitors are doing. Today’s owners/managers must be able to evaluate software choices and identify their requirements, for now and in the future.

Q Where do you see the evolution of the DME software industry going?
A In early years software was severely restricted by the functionality of hardware. Consequently, most software was cumbersome, difficult to deal with, and expensive.

Now, much has changed, but I firmly believe that software should not be priced according to what the market will bear, nor priced based on recovery of development cost in a set time frame. Software should be priced according to what is fair for the DME client.

I feel a responsibility to develop software that is user friendly and not cost prohibitive. Software must also be developed to handle user growth. The user should never be placed in the position requiring them to purchase new software every 5 or 10 years.

Windows® processing increased the ability to provide a much higher level of user-friendliness for the software. Many additional capabilities are now available with the advent of developer tools and the World Wide Web.

In the future, you will have the ability to conduct your business in ways that you would not have dreamed possible a short 5 years ago. Your choice of software is one of the most important decisions you make for the future survivability of your firm.

The ROHO Group, Belleville, Ill, has promoted Tom Brocherding to senior vice president of global medical sales and Tom Hartmann to vice president of North American sales.

Drive Medical Design & Manufacturing, a division of Medical Depot, Farmingdale, NY, a DME manufacturer, has acquired the assets of WinMed Products Co, a Fort Myers, Fla-based mobility products manufacturer.

Product Pros, Columbus, Ohio, has partnered with Cardinal Home Healthcare to offer a Rehab Plus+ program designed to allow Cardinal’s pharmacy and HME customers to provide a full range of custom mobility and specialty home health care products.

Trac Medical Solutions Inc, Schenectady, NY, a subsidiary of AuthentiDate Holding Corp, Schenectady, and Entrust Inc, Dallas, an Internet security solutions and services provider, will combine Entrust’s digital signature and Trac Medical’s Internet medical forms processing technology to create solutions to prevent fraud in Web-based health care transitions, while adhering to information privacy regulations.