Don't Hold Your Breath - for Some Companies to Deliver.

By I.J. Hudson

“Do what you say you’ll do.” That’s part of my mantra on how people should conduct themselves personally and in business.

I’ve had reason to “do business” with a number of firms related to the healthcare industry and wanted to share some things I see as issues, and at least one instance of someone, as my friend Jeremy Epstein would say, “being remarkable.”

Here’s the litany:

   

    The maker of a specialized device;

    The company that sold the device; and

    Two suppliers of a healthcare product.

1)      An after hours call to request help in receiving a replacement “specialized device” led to a local referral of two companies who could supply intermediate help until the original company in could be reached the next day.  More on the intermediate help in 3.

2)      The company that sold the device had four different answers to the same question; the answer dependent upon which person answered it.  When can we receive a replacement unit?  “We will ship it out tomorrow (Friday).”  The distance is 2200 miles.  I’m thinking they will overnight the device, but as Saturday faded into Sunday into Monday morning - nothing received.  It’s Monday evening, and they’ve promised it on Friday…again. 

I guess it’s time to unveil what I’m talking about – oxygen for an 85-year old veteran of World War II.  He has a portable oxygen “concentrator” unit that died when our home took six hits from PEPCO.  It was plugged in to charge.  It reset once and worked for a few hours – then died. That’s what started a series of calls to find a replacement (from manufacturer or company that sold it) and to find backup oxygen (the healthcare product) until it arrived.

 3)   The large local company we contacted that supplies home oxygen could accommodate us: payment up front (no interest in receiving payment through his award from DOL), and you can come pick it up, if you’re interested).  To these folks, it was just a business.  “We’re big. You need us more than we need you” was the message made clear with every contact.

The smaller company recommended by the equipment maker was Spectrum Medical, Inc. in Silver Spring, MD, who responded with, “What can we do to help?”  Their help began within a couple of hours, and this was at night.  Over several days, they did what they said they would and went out of their way to be helpful and remarkable – especially a guy named “Rob.” They were remarkable enough to inspire me to write this posting.

I don’t mention the names of the other characters in this short story because they aren’t remarkable.  Unfortunately, if you live in the Washington, DC area, you will probably deal with them, and I suspect they are the norm in their respective areas. Too bad. The norm isn’t good enough when you’re talking about oxygen.

As my father-in-law says, “it’s not like you can hold your breath.”