Prologue

From the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services’ proposal this summer for changes to the competitive bidding process, we learned that:

1. CMS believes that there are significant savings to be had by moving DME business in the direction of remote item delivery, especially for continuous glucose monitors and other diabetes management supplies
2. CMS does not appear to see value in DMEs’ role as providers of services in addition to products.

DMEs can make their appeals on both grounds to legislators, but there is also potential for DMEs to take some communications and marketing lessons from these slights. While CMS (and other people in government) may be the most impactful place to start working on these uncharitable perceptions, the broader public—especially the patients DMEs serve, their families and caregivers, and even the DMEs’ employees—is also a group in which DMEs can cultivate awareness of the full range of ways DMEs help their communities.

Part one: Studies show DME services add value

The first question we should ask is: do DMEs genuinely add value as service providers?

If the industry response includes making the case to legislators and the public that DMEs have a role to play in patient care beyond simply delivering supplies, it will be helpful to start from a position backed up by study.

Fortunately for us, the answer is unequivocally yes—over the past several decades, studies conducted on patient outcomes suggest that their successful use of DME-provided equipment depends on enablement.

It’s observable that patients appreciate DME services and training. In the early 2000s, when CMS was exploring options for reducing costs and considering standing up the first version of the competitive bidding program, one preparatory study examined the relationship between beneficiary satisfaction and training provided by DMEs. That study found that, for supplies and equipment that beneficiaries used themselves and that require training, in particular oxygen equipment, beneficiary satisfaction was a) generally very high, b) high relative to satisfaction ratings Medicare beneficiaries gave to other healthcare services, and c) strongly related to the “perceived quality of training” that the beneficiaries received.

High-quality service produces better adherence and outcomes

Beyond patient preference, other research makes it possible to draw links between quality of service and patient outcomes.

For example, patients who switch the type of CPAP mask they use are more likely to abandon the course of therapy, suggesting that proper mask selection and fitting is one key element in encouraging patient adherence. Because PAP therapy plays a role in preventing or reducing the risk of cardiovascular conditions, additional study shows that PAP adherence directly relates to lower occurrence of serious cardiovascular events. The same study showing that relationship also highlights reductions in total healthcare costs for adherent patients vs. non-adherent, a finding which has been echoed by other studies, including some focused specifically on the costs among Medicare beneficiaries.

Meanwhile, strategies for reducing the total cost of care that are seeing adoption elsewhere in healthcare, such as telehealth, are specifically not apt for mask fitting services. While research continues into additional solutions and strategies, like mask fit kits that can be sent directly to beneficiaries, the current range of possibilities suggest that Medicare should be doing more, not less, to ensure beneficiaries have access to in-person fitting services from their CPAP supplier. Even if that means covering the cost of the mask fitting, to do so would be in Medicare’s best financial interest, as evidenced by the much greater reduction in total additional cost of care delivered by patient adherence.

The relationship between DMEs’ role as experts in equipment usage and enhanced patient adherence to treatment regimens, leading to better patient outcomes, has also been specifically demonstrated in comparison to other channels that deliver the same supplies.

For example, a 2024 study comparing adherence rates between patients who received their first continuous glucose monitors from a DME and those who received them from a pharmacy found a significantly higher rate of adherence in the DME patient group. That study attributed the difference to “specialized support and personalized training on device usage, including initial setup, troubleshooting during ongoing use, and interpretation of data generated by the device” that DMEs provide and pharmacies lack.

The same study further found that the pharmacy patients had higher total medical costs than their DME peers, and that when patients lapsed in their adherence, those who received supplies from a DME were more likely to reinitiate therapy. Although this first study was based on a group that included a large number of patients using commercial insurance, a second study released a year later confirmed higher adherence and total lower costs for Medicare and Medicare Advantage patients who received their continuous glucose monitors from a DME versus a pharmacy.

Since the current CBP proposal seems poised to relegate CGMs to remote item delivery, what CMS sees as a potential short term cost reduction is actually likely to drive a large increase in downstream costs specifically because it deprives patients of the opportunity to learn from the expertise provided by DMEs.

In other words, the value DMEs offer Medicare that no other supplier can is service-driven savings. To change minds, that is the story the industry has to tell.

Part two: Centering DME patients and service in public-facing communications

While industry groups take on the advocacy work necessary to adjust CMS’ perspective and engage relevant members of government, the rest of the industry can still take the lesson that public perception of DMEs could better foreground their role as crucial service providers.

For individual companies, this is fundamentally a marketing and communications challenge. Fortunately, there are many opportunities, especially online, for DMEs to highlight and emphasize patient outcomes, patient opinions, and the quality of their services.

Putting patient stories first

Among the DMEs that do spend time and effort building patients into their public presentation, the most common approach is to tell individual patients’ stories to illustrate the outcomes they can create.

A straightforward approach to telling one patient’s story is to do a case study—effectively, an interview with the patient. A typical example will talk about:

1. What the patient’s life was like before they experienced whatever condition or event necessitated care
2. How they experienced their condition before they worked with the DME
3. Any choices or decisions they made while working with the DME
4. Ways the provider was able to make the experience exceptionally easy or helpful
5. The result of working with the DME
6. And often, a story about the patient’s life either after initially working with the DME or during their ongoing relationship.

As a marketing practice, this kind of case study is on the more labor-intensive side, but provides a long-lasting and easy-to-reuse set of marketing assets (usually including photos of the patient). The value to each individual potential customer is both informational and emotionally reassuring, and because the stories are longform, it’s easy to make them information-dense enough to answer a fair amount of common questions about the experience of receiving care from the DME in each story.

Most companies can probably only invest time in making case studies on an occasional basis, but they accumulate in value as they collect. Once a DME has had time to create a few, their collection of patient stories gives potential customers a menu of faces and situations to identify with, which makes it easy to imagine a happy outcome in their own futures.

Patient story analysis: Numotion

An example of a company that effectively uses patient story case studies in their marketing is Numotion, a provider of CRT and mobility products based in Tennessee. People who visit Numotion’s website (including potential new customers who are learning about Numotion for the first time) are currently greeted by a photo of Madilynn, an eight-year-old patient smiling as she stands in her walker. It’s obvious that it’s a real patient, and not stock photography. The effect is immediate social validation for the brand and service, and a disarming display of patient happiness that quickly offers reassurance in a provider evaluation process that may likely be the visitor’s first.

From there, the visitor can choose to navigate out to Madilynn’s entire story, which is similar in shape to the outline given in the previous section. Numotion’s version of the asset spends a fair amount of time describing the patient’s experience of working with the team, during which they capitalize on a few opportunities: mentioning continuity of service at multiple locations despite the patient moving states, calling out a specific employee for their help, and describing the process of walker replacement step-by-step so a potential customer can get a sense of what they’ll have to do to receive care.

Below Madilynn’s story on the page, there are options to continue reading other patient stories, which are also accessible on a collection page prominently linked in the top navigation menu on the website.

Focusing on the service quality is an intentional choice—these case studies provide opportunities to work on specific objections or create a sense of reassurance, depending on the exact marketing challenges the DME believes it faces with new customers. Other examples from other providers may spend more time on the patient’s choices or the factors that go into them, if the goal is educational. Another option would be to focus on good outcomes or happy state post-engagement, if the goal is to make patients feel more comfortable or excited to begin working with the provider.

It’s not a huge asset—about 400 words and three pictures—but Numotion extended it significantly by reusing it in various placements. Aside from the prominent homepage placement (which rotates to stay fresh as the team publishes new case studies), the story itself, and the additional entry in the library of case studies, they also turned it into social content across their different channels, like Instagram and LinkedIn.

While Numotion has the staff and resources to effectively deliver these on a regular basis, the same approach would work as an occasional motion for any DME—and would be especially worthwhile for those offering products that form the basis of long-lasting relationships. Customers don’t require a frequent stream of updates on patient outcomes to keep them happy, but new patients evaluating options for DME partners that they will likely have to work with for a long time will certainly appreciate the opportunity to see themselves and their own futures in even just a few customer stories.

Highlighting individual service providers

Another choice some DMEs make is to emphasize their own people in their marketing. For similar reasons to patient stories, employee features humanize the brand, especially for patient populations that require lots of education or training.

One company that does a great job of including their employees in their public presentation is Acelleron, a provider focused mostly on breast pumps and nebulizers in Massachusetts.

Acelleron’s core offering is a product that customers are often new to using which requires both a good fit and resolving a learning curve. Accordingly, they provide a mix of on-demand training resources and virtual consultations to help customers understand the variables between their products and use them correctly.

While it would be easy (and totally sufficient) to deliver their recorded content and resources without giving a byline to the presenter, for example as just an anonymous voiceover, Acelleron instead uses a named and credentialed employee. They also consistently use the same presenter for all videos of a specific theme: for example, every entry in their Breast Pump Unboxing Series is presented by Brittany Regan Fisher, an International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant on their team.

Separately, they occasionally put the spotlight on individual employees as part of the mix in their social media presence. For example, here’s Brittany again being introduced in a post that gestures at a number of services Acelleron offers while also humanizing those service offerings in the form of an employee with listed, believable, relatable values.

Many of Acelleron’s employee-forward posts use an easy-to-replicate strategy popular among other DMEs and healthcare providers with active social media presences, which is using an awareness day as an occasion to share employee profiles. There are many examples on their Instagram feed, like National Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day and Asthma and Allergy Awareness Month. Because these days are often the creation of advocacy groups, posts in this theme do double-duty by relating the DME’s brand to another prosocial cause in addition to highlighting the humans that deliver care on its behalf.

Differentiating with quality of service

In Acelleron’s case, the human focus helps potential customers derisk the idea of using them as a provider because effective use of their products requires one-on-one training and fittings. Even for DMEs whose products don’t, though, shining the spotlight on employees who may be underappreciated despite being critical links in the chain of care (like delivery drivers) can help differentiate against non-healthcare-incumbent vendors, like Amazon, which cannot and do not deliver anything except the physical products.

As a purely marketing matter, differentiating on the quality of service is a common tactic used by commodity providers across all industries, from home security companies to musical instrument retailers to grey-market watch boutiques. DMEs don’t need to limit their sources of inspiration to just other players in the industry—ideas for this kind of positioning are everywhere once you start looking.

Unlike grey-market watch boutiques, though, DMEs face unique existential threats from the downstream consequences of payers and lawmakers ignoring the value of their expertise. Changing that trajectory has been an evergreen challenge for the DME industry for years, but even outside the realm of advocacy and lobbying, many providers leave some easy-to-use tools untouched.

Posting can’t and shouldn’t replace the staples of community marketing, like sponsoring local tee-ball teams and participating in community events, but it can be a fairly low-lift way to ensure that the bonds DMEs form with their patient base are human-forward.

Ultimately, the most important way DMEs can make the case that their services matter for patient outcomes is to continue to deliver the care that leads to better health. No amount of marketing effort can equal the value of extending lives, easing chronic pain, or restoring mobility. But when it’s time to make that case to lawmakers, it’s easiest to do so in partnership with the people DMEs benefit most—their customers.