Yes, I have the power
Well, not really, but it felt that way.
As I was walking into my office today, the phone was ringing. I grabbed it … it was the big shot at Sunrise Medical (the wheelchair company) who hand delivered Pearlsky’s fourth chair! He wanted to assure me that Claire‘s Sophie will be getting her chair cared for in the next couple of days. Ah ha! … the name “Single Dad” instills the fear of god in some people. Okay, not really. He really is a great guy, he knew that I was “aware” of what is happening with the chair, and after Claire was updated, he wanted to make sure I knew as well. (See Claire’s post here) (Go read it so you know I’m not making this stuff up!) (Then you can vote for who writes better emails!) (But then, her’s worked, so it’s a wash) (Maybe)
From the comments on the last post, I just want to clear some stuff up and enlighten you a bit more on the wheelchair nightmare.
Yes, these chairs cost upwards of $8000, Pearlsky’s cost $8032.60 actually (click for breakdown). Why? Lots of reasons, engineering and design costs, testing and liability costs, and middlemen. The chair parts and design are by Sunrise Medical, and they do a pretty good job. Then the parts, like a kit, are ordered by your DME (Durable Medical Equipment) company, then the DME puts it all together, supposedly tests it, and then delivers it to you, after charging your insurance company, etc. I am finding that it is usually the DME that is at least partly to blame for the problems. The cost is also high because the chairs are not a single design that gets knocked off an assembly line somewhere. Often parts are custom made to some degree. Don’t get me wrong, I am not making excuses for these things, but I am not nearly as upset at the price as I am the end quality. Scratches, wrong parts, wrong mix of parts, and worst of all, not tested.
What the people at both the DME and the manufacturer don’t get is that the chair is one’s life, one’s transport, one’s living room chair, one’s dining chair, one’s scooter, one’s take-a-snooze-chair, one’s school chair, one’s desk chair, and pretty much one’s most valued possession. What they don’t get is if the chair is not working, Pearlsky is bedridden. Period. I cannot pick her up, we use lifts. Without the wheelchair, I can lift her out of bed … onto the floor. Period. These kids are bedridden (or, at the very least, housebound) if the wheelchair breaks. Your car breaks, you can rent or borrow one. Your washing machine breaks, you take your laundry somewhere. Your custom special fitting wheelchair breaks, you are in trouble. And you need a fix quickly.
In my state, BY LAW, I am not allowed to buy wheelchair parts unless the DME submits the request to Medicaid and Medicaid turns it down. Until that point, I am not allowed to buy spare parts. Period. Yeah, trust me, I have fought this (and can get around it, illegally). Outrageous, no? The chair breaks and Pearlsky has to wait for Medicaid to reject or accept the charge BEFORE the part is even ordered. For eight grand, deliver a chair that works and that you can and will stand behind. Or in front of, if you dare … 😉
Speaking of driving people crazy … Pearlsky has been on school break this week (who is driving whom more crazy, I am not sure). What’s up with that? Spending a full week at home with Single Dad is enough to drive anyone batty. Hopefully soon Pearlsky will tell you how true that is.
Should I start calling you or Claire He-Man?
I, for one, do not think the costs are too high. I think the quality and service and time-frame are all below acceptable quality levels.
Nobody asked my opinion, I’m just stating it for the record as someone with a history in the manufacturing business. The costs jive totally in my head, they do not reek as excessive for what the item is. Everything else? Points to me wanting to re-design a company logo using a turd.
Again…my opinion only. I’m sure the company and the ownership ‘mean well’.
Frankly? That isn’t good enough. Not in a situation like this. It just isn’t.
Ken…Really? You see $8k in a wheelchair? I can buy a car for that. Considering the designs have not changed that much in at least 10 years since we’ve needed to use one, I can’t see that there’s much decent R&D going on. Some of the repair stuff one can buy in a bike shop for way less. The frame tubing isn’t even waterproof. I don’t know….it still looks to me as if they are just taking advantage of the fact that they will get paid top dollar because of governments and insurance companies.
I’ve worked in manufacturing as the office manager of a machine shop and I can tell you that $8k is not a lot for any custom job. However, if the product fails to meet specs or meet deadline, the shop eats the cost of the failure. That’s standard in any contract.
On list of priorities I would expect a wheelchair to 1) have wheels, 2) have a seat, back and footrests, 3) roll, turn and pivot 4) provide every other customizeable need, from posture support to respiratory therapy.
No customer of my shop would ever have accepted a product that was out of spec. Not the government, not the bike shops, not the guy who designed high-end duck calls. If we had ever failed to produce on time would have been penalized, both in our end billing and in our reputation. There is no universe in which we would have gotten to charge full price on a job we delivered 58 days late.
Companies which *ahem* serve the disabled (especially the developmentally disabled) can get away with a lot, because the population overall lacks a voice. I’d love to see customers and clients come together and negotiate a new framework for these contracts. What if the companies had to take $15 off the price of the chair for every day they were late? $15 for a day spent bedridden or in a non-functioning chair seems like an awfully small price to me, but after 58 days or 90 days…you’d be seeing a pretty nice refund check. I bet the companies would shape up in a big hurry if it started hurting them where it counts.
If we as parents were paying $8K in cash for the product(s), the process would be different. The system is one operating almost entirely with insurance and governmental agencies funding all of it, which explains why many of the DME suppliers (not manufacturers) do not provide information to consumers about choices that they assume the insurance companies will not fund. As paying consumers, we would demand more in every area, but we also would opt for cheaper solutions sometimes.
I will openly admit that I have no idea how much my son’s last wheelchair cost. Along with this admission comes the knowledge that the chair was not equipped with a travel option (rings for tie downs) because my DME supplier did not tell me it was an option that my son’s medical coverage would not pay for, but that I could purchase. More paperwork would have been involved including a letter of medical necessity and denial letters from both insurance companies. The DME salesman did not tell me about a $150.00 option I could have paid for as an add-on that would have made my son’s life safer and my life easier.
The above message made me think of something – are there any after market companies that can do add-on stuff. Kind of like car shops – where you can take the product and pay someone to add on/modify the chair? If I wanted tied downs on my truck I’d take it to a specialty shop (or do it myself). So I would think you could modify/weld on tie downs on a wheelchair since the main base is a metal of some type.