Susan Verille, vice president of sales, PARI Respiratory; Penny Webster, national sales manager, PARI Respiratory.

Dealer/Provider spoke with Susan Verille, vice president of sales, PARI Respiratory Equipment Inc, Midlothian, Va, and Penny Webster, national sales manager, PARI Respiratory Inc, about the home inhal-ation drug therapy market and how PARI is helping providers make a profit in this market.

Dealer/Provider: If CMS lowers its dispensing fee for home inhalation drug therapy, will it affect the way you do business with providers?

Verille: It will affect the way that we do business because several providers have told us that if the dispensing fee gets lowered to a certain level, they will no longer be in the drug delivery business. It will also affect the entire industry because everyone will be losing money so everyone will feel the squeeze—and we are going to have to share equally in the loss that comes from the lower dispensing fee.

Dealer/Provider: What strategies can providers use to continue to distribute this therapy while still making a profit?

Webster: If it is lowered again, I think some of the providers could make up the difference by using reusable nebulizers in the marketplace, which would reduce their cost of mailings for the disposables.

Verille: We are going to develop products down the road that will help providers serve customers more efficiently with faster delivery and still have good reimbursement under the reusable codes. So they will be able to make margins at least on the reusable nebulizers compared to some of the options they have with disposable nebulizers.

Dealer/Provider: What is the biggest misconception among CMS officials about nebulizer equipment and medications?

Verille: The biggest misconception is that this product is not needed by most patients. The big misconception is that this is a luxury when there are patients who cannot coordinate hand lung inhalation and they need nebulizers to deliver the medication to their lungs. My biggest worry is that CMS will make cuts, making it difficult for providers to give nebulization options to their patients, and forcing patients onto MDIs completely. If this happens, we are going to have a lot more back-end costs on ER visits, unscheduled office visits, and more cost in general for medical care because these patients will not be under control, and they will not stay under control. DP