Dealer/Provider spoke with Ed Radtke, VP of marketing and sales for SeQual Technologies, San Diego, about challenges facing oxygen providers.

Dealer/Provider: What are the critical choices facing oxygen providers today?

Radtke: Providers are trying to decide which modality will lower costs and minimize the negative impact of the 36-month cap.

D/P: What main options are available to providers?

Radtke: The first are oxygen systems built around a classic 50-pound, continuous-flow home concentrator. This category includes combinations of a continuous flow concentrator with a portable pulse-only concentrator, or with a home cylinder refilling system.  

The second category is the “do everything” concentrator, a single product that can supply continuous flow oxygen for nocturnal use and high stress activities, or can run on its battery to allow ambulation away from home. At the moment, the SeQual Eclipse is the only product in this category, but we expect to see products from other companies. Both product categories eliminate oxygen delivery, but offer substantially different benefits to patients and providers.

D/P:  What is the difference to patients?

Radtke:The systems built around a classic home concentrator change a patient’s lifestyle very little. The home refilling systems actually increase the amount of equipment at home and the patient’s cost for electricity, and do nothing to extend ambulation time away from home, or to ease the tremendous difficulties involved with travel. The home concentrator/pulse portable combination does allow more time away from home, but these systems don’t help with overnight travel, because they cannot provide continuous-flow nocturnal oxygen, the accepted standard of care. The “do everything” concentrator, on the other hand, delivers very positive patient benefits, as we have seen in our extended Eclipse beta testing with patients. It provides the extended ambulation time of the pulse portables; it provides the needed continuous flow oxygen for overnight travel; and it greatly reduces both the amount of equipment at home and the patient’s electricity cost.

D/P: And to providers?

Radtke: The “do everything” concentrator offers the lowest up-front cost, plus greatly reduces patient training time, and the amount of equipment to inventory, deliver, set up, and maintain.