With any luck, that gorgeous place will be our new office. Eep.
It’s a rehab project to end all projects. The basement isn’t finished, there are no walls on the first floor and there is no second floor – though, with the high ceiling, there’s enough space for two additional floors.
The problem is as follows: the HME industry is capsizing. Most professional magazines like HomeCare have no special insight; basically, they’re watching providers like us to see what we do. The options they’ve outlined are fail, be consumed by a larger company, or switch gears and transition into another business.
We’ve more or less looked at the third option. We’re basically hoping to get a larger property, expand the business, and if all else fails hope the value of the property goes up to do other things.
This business will be 25 years old next year. The notion that it might not exist next year is pretty frightening. Of course, it’s my source of income but also, I grew up in this business. It’s one of the few things I know well.
Basically, insurance companies are contracting and squeezing us. Only the largest companies will survive it seems, since they can absorb that sort of shock. Our overhead is low, since we never over expanded. As of last year, we’re still profitable, but since January we’ve been taking hit after hit after hit. It’s enough to keep a person up at night.
And to cap it off, we have the JCAHO survey. Failing that will pretty much crush the company fully and totally.
I keep chanting ‘this too shall pass’ and I wonder what our lives will look like five years from now. I hope it’ll be all smiles, but the way things have been going, who knows?
Related posts:
