Oxygen concentrator manufacturers take note: if you would like to capture more of certified respiratory therapist Michael Lida’s business in the future, then endow your home-fill machine with the ability to automatically dial up his office to let him know any time something has gone wrong.

Oh, and maybe you could arrange for the malfunctioning unit to also detail in its phone call exactly which replacement parts he needs to bring on the trip to the oxygen patient’s home.

In Lida’s view, those are about the only innovations that manufacturers could possibly roll out to cause him to love the product more than he already does. “Concentrators in general have cut our costs of time and labor on deliveries by 40%,” says Lida, holder of a master’s degree in health care administration and in charge of the respiratory, service, and rehabilitation departments at Equipped For Life in Hagerstown, Md. “We began converting from liquid oxygen systems to concentrators about 6 years ago and now nearly all of our oxygen patients have a concentrator in their home. There was, of course, an initial cost to this changeover. But in the long run, we have eliminated the costs of paying for liquid, liquid vessels, maintenance, special transport vehicles, and training of newly hired delivery technicians.”

Switching from liquid to concentrators has also freed up quite a bit of real estate within the Equipped For Life warehouse, space that can now be used to stock a variety of other goods. “And there’s increased safety,” adds Lida. “With liquid systems, the oxygen is highly combustible and it stores at a temperature close to 300 degrees below zero. There’s always the risk that a patient could manhandle the system and become exposed to the liquid oxygen, with severe injury resulting.

“By contrast,” he continues, “with a concentrator, the oxygen runs through safety systems that reliably protect against mishaps. There’s no super-freezing temperature factor to worry about.”

More Computerization
Concentrators in recent years have become more and more computerized. Units come with diagnostic code systems that allow the technician dispatched to the patient’s home to quickly upon arrival determine the nature of the malfunction. “This is a capability that allows us to far more easily determine whether the machine can be repaired in the field or if it has to be returned to the shop,” says Lida. “This alone saves enormous time. In fact, a significant number of our repairs now take place in the home—and in a matter of a few minutes—because we right away know what’s wrong.”

For Lida’s company, more fixes accomplished in the home means he can maintain a smaller inventory of backup units. “We take machines back to the shop less often, so we don’t need as many in reserve for deployment as leave-behind substitutes,” he says.

Another appreciated feature in today’s concentrators is an oxygen sensing device. If the oxygen content produced by the concentrator dips below 90%, an alarm lights up and sounds off to warn the patient that he’s no longer receiving adequate oxygen. “Before this feature, you’d go out to the home every 3 months to do a maintenance check to make sure the oxygen being generated was above 90% concentration,” says Lida. “But the problem with this was that something could go wrong 2 weeks after inspection and you might not discover the machine’s failure to produce the right amount of oxygen until your next maintenance visit if the nature of the malfunction was such that it allowed the unit to continue running during that time.

“Now, with oxygen sensing, we only have to do a maintenance inspection once a year. This saves 3 trips to the home plus we have the peace of mind that the patient will know immediately if oxygen output is below proper levels.”

Along with greater computerization, concentrators also are becoming more compact. “They have models that operate in your car,” says Lida. “You just plug into the cigarette lighter receptacle and the concentrator draws the electricity it needs to run. These weigh less than 10 pounds. I would not be surprised in the future to see concentrators so small and lightweight that they can fit inside a belt pouch.”

Meanwhile, regulators have gotten better too over the years, especially those of the conserving variety. “Conserving devices make portable systems all the more desirable because they allow patients to enjoy greater freedom of mobility by extending the time the oxygen bottle lasts before hitting empty,” Lida says. “Conserving devices are the future where portability is concerned.”

But with concentrators, the future is now. In Lida’s estimation, the single most important innovation in that segment has been the ability of machines to fill a portable oxygen bottle at home. “A lot of dealers still use liquid systems,” Lida offers. “They will give their clients a concentrator to use in the house and then a liquid system separately so that they can have portability. The problem with this is that you’ve got to send a technician out to the house once a week to refill the liquid system.

“But with the concentrator that also fills the portable bottle, it eliminates that weekly trip. The patient can fill the bottles at will, at his own convenience.”

That, Lida enthuses, also saves a lot of wear and tear on the delivery tech’s back. “An average home-fill system,” he says, “weighs about 72 pounds. The average liquid vessels weighs 160 pounds, full. The home-fill system, we carry it in one time and leave it. The liquid vessel, we have to once a week carry it back and forth, up and down flights of stairs, at times in bad weather.”

Moreover, home-fill systems offer patients a choice of portable bottle size. “Let’s say you are an elderly woman of slight frame and you want to go outside to work in your flower garden,” Lida illustrates. “You are not going to want— or necessarily even be able to take a big tank out with you. What you want is a small bottle, and this is how you can have it.”

Outshine the Competition
Equipped for Life started 19 years ago and provides everything from hospital beds and bedside commodes to mobility aids and wound-care products. It attracts customers from as far as 50 miles out. Concentrators and regulators are a substantial part of the total business, according to Lida. “There are two important things you must have to be successful with concentrators and regulators,” he says. “The first is knowledge of who your customer is. Armed with that, you are in position to deliver superior service for their needs and really take care of them. And what allows you to really take care of them is the second important thing you must have – good equipment.”

No surprise, then, to learn that Lida spends a fair amount of his time researching equipment. Some of his gleaned insights with regard to concentrators and regulators come from attending trade shows, while others are gained by reading journal articles and surfing the Internet. He also asks manufacturers to let him have equipment on a trial basis so that he can gauge first-hand whether a machine is worth acquiring. “Most vendors are very open to 30-day trials,” he reveals, noting that there’s usually a quid-pro-quid involved. “In return for the loan of the equipment, the manufacturer may ask for a written critique” which helps point the vendor toward future refinements.

A difficulty in being a resource for concentrators is—as always—reimbursement. “Medicare keeps cutting and cutting and cutting,” Lida laments.

Fortunately, the cost-efficiencies inherent to concentrators go a long way toward offsetting the impact of Medicare’s miserly proclivities. “We are able to continue offering excellent service, and that’s our real bottom line,” Lida assures.

Also a challenge: trying to outshine the competition. As Lida explains it, “It all comes down to who can do the most for the client and be able to most effectively tell the world about it. It gets back to customer care and attracting referrals with good marketing.”

And that’s another reason why concentrators and regulators are so valuable to the company’s prospects of greater success. “With the money I’m saving thanks to this equipment, I can now put more attention into the service department,” Lida says. “By being able to offer even better service and patient care, being able to deliver other items they need, I’m laying the groundwork for having more satisfied customers. The more satisfied customers I have, the more voices out there telling their doctors and friends and neighbors about us, which will in time lead to even more business for us.”

Rich Smith is a contributing writer for Dealer/Provider.