Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 12, 1990 TAG: 9004130452
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETSY BIESENBACH SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Beth Garland did.
Garland, 34, is the owner of Northwest Home Health Center, which sells home nursing items - from bedpans to walkers to hospital beds.
For 8 1/2 years, Garland worked as a medical technologist at Community Hospital, where she performed blood tests.
"I was one of those vampire people," she said.
Hospitals were having a difficult time before she quit her job. Many of them were cutting back on employees, which overworked the ones they kept. The situation, she said, was stressful, because accuracy was all-important.
"When it's someone's blood, you can't make a mistake."
With her boyfriend, Tom Garland, whom she married less than a year ago, she talked about what she should do.
Tom, a pharmacist, "had always wanted to get into durable medical equipment," she said. They both thought it would be a good idea for her.
Garland sold some real estate she owned and made enough money to open the store on Melrose Avenue.
The store is in a small, older shopping center across from Forest Park Elementary School, rather than in a large, new mall. But Garland thinks the location is ideal. Melrose Avenue is a high-traffic area, she said, and hers is the only non-hospital-owned home health-care center in Northwest Roanoke.
"Roanoke is very neighborhood oriented," she said.
"People raised in Vinton shop in Vinton. If you live in Southwest, you shop in Southwest."
Most of her business comes from referrals from doctors, hospitals and other professionals, she said. But some of it does come from people who notice the store while they are on other errands.
Until recently, she said, the store was on a bus route, which was convenient for customers who don't own cars.
"We're still mad about that," she said about the change in the bus route. Some customers, she said, don't drive, and have to find a ride or hire a taxi to get there.
As an added advantage, she said, one of the three pharmacies Tom Garland is a part owner of is across the parking lot.
The home health-care business, she said, is competitive. With insurance companies cutting back on how long they will pay for hospital stays and with the aging of the U.S. population, more and more people are needing nursing services at home.
Many businesses like hers, she said, have "come and gone," and she is in direct competition with local hospitals as well, some of which are offering the same products and services.
"There's more of a need," she said.
Working in her favor, she added, are "freedom of choice" policies, under which patients are given lists of home health-care providers. They can make their decisions about where to buy from the list.
The reason Garland's business has survived, she said, is "knowing it was going to take a long time to make a profit."
One of the biggest problems, she said, is that while she must pay suppliers for equipment she orders within 15 to 30 days, Medicare payments can stretch out over 15 months sometimes.
Garland hasn't seen a profit, she said, but after a little over a year and a half of running the business, she is beginning to break even.
Although most people come in with a prescription from a doctor or a physical therapist, Garland said her medical technology background has been a big help to her, particularly in the area of teaching diabetics to monitor their blood-sugar levels, which she hopes to do more of.
When she started the business, Garland said, she tried to do everything herself, including the paper work, which is voluminous because of Medicare claims processing.
Now, she has help from a full-time employee, Pat Casey.
Working for herself "has its advantages and disadvantages," she said.
While she misses having a steady paycheck, one of the things Garland likes best about owning her own business is the variety of activities. The diabetic instruction takes up about 30 percent of her time, she said. A lot of the rest of it is spent making deliveries of equipment, often with her stepson as a helper.
Most of the deliveries, she said, are made on Saturdays. The store itself is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Garland also likes working with people. "With most people, you don't have to do a lot to make them happy."
Besides expanding the diabetic instruction, Garland would also like to start offering breast prostheses.
Garland is glad she opened the business, she said, but, she laughed, if she had known before she started what she knows now, she would probably have been too scared to even start.
by CNB