Oxygen Tank vs. POC – One makes you a prisoner to your home and the other offers endless freedom. Which would you prefer?
Eddie’s Oxygen Therapy Story
Let me tell you about an old neighbor of mine: Eddie.
Eddie had lived the kind of life a lot of people envy. He’d served his country and seen the world. He came home, got married, and he got a good job at a furniture plant. It helped him buy a house and put a couple of kids through college; it even let him set up some savings for his grand kids when they came.
One day, though, Eddie was out playing with his granddaughter. She loved basketball, and he loved going out to the driveway and shooting hoops with her. But as they played on, Eddie found it harder and harder to breathe. Soon, he was gasping for air. His vision dimmed around him, and he felt himself start to fall.
When Eddie woke up, he was in the hospital, tubes in his nose and a clamp on his finger. Years of working in the furniture plant were catching up with him at last, as the doctors told him he had pulmonary fibrosis. He’d never get better, the doctors said, but they could do some things to help keep him from getting worse.
Oxygen Tank vs. POC
If you’re like most people, you’d take any chance to keep living a good life, and you’d trust your doctors.
The thing is, while hospitals do a lot of good work for a lot of people, they know they’ve only got so many beds. They also know that people don’t want to be hospital patients for very long at a time. Consequently, hospitals work to get their patients out and back into the world as quickly as they can.
What this meant for Eddie is hospitals get their patients stabilized and then refer them out to medical suppliers for the oxygen therapy they need, sometimes in a matter of a few hours. Most of the time, the referral will be to a big-name national provider that spends its money on advertising instead of on providing the best treatment options and customer service.
When Eddie got home, he had to have help unloading the tanks and concentrator. (That’s how I know about them. I had to be a good neighbor and lend a hand.) Even with help, though, Eddie struggled with the equipment, gasping for air again while surrounded by what his doctors and an unhelpful big-business staff told him would help him breathe better. Which reinforces the point, oxygen tank vs. POC?
Sound familiar?
Oxygen Therapy Options
Even if the big-name places have other options for oxygen therapy, they’ll often push people into taking oxygen tanks and the kind of oxygen concentrator that’s been in use since the 1970s. Why? They’re usually the cheapest option for oxygen therapy. Oxygen tanks are also heavy, and they can be dangerous. Too, they tend to be rationed out, with therapy patients only getting a few at a time, which is never enough. And traditional oxygen concentrators work like anchors, tethering people not only to their homes, but to one room in their homes.
There’s this, too: it’s easy for a big business to cut a job. Each job cut results in unanswered phone calls and fewer available service visits. Tanks don’t get refilled or replaced when they’re needed, and valves don’t get repaired when they break.
What’s worse is that big national providers, as well as many insurers, will lock patients into five-year contracts. So, if you want to change oxygen providers… good luck.
When it’s your very breath of life, how long should you have to wait?
If the time comes that you are put on oxygen therapy, remember that you deserve, and you should demand, the best care possible. For oxygen therapy, this will be a responsive local provider who will bill your insurance for a portable oxygen concentrator.
Don’t get caught in a years-long contract that ties you to tanks. It’s not too late to make a wiser choice.
You Have a Choice Between Tanks or POCs
Don’t settle for mediocre service from a faceless big business with barely adequate supplies. You can work with a company whose offices are where you are, who know your doctors, whose workers live where you live and are part of your community. Additionally, you can get equipment that’s easy to use and easy to travel with. You can have the freedom to keep living the life you’ve worked so hard to build.
It sounds good to me. Does it sound good to you?
Do me a favor. Take thirty seconds and fill out the form below. We’ll reach out with information and options about how you can get a portable oxygen concentrator, and we’ll work to bill your insurance for it.
If we can’t bill your insurance now, we’ll pre-qualify you the best possible rate for a portable oxygen concentrator until we can bill your insurance. It’ll be as low as $2.29 a day, less than half an average cup of coffee.
How much is it worth to you to keep your freedom?
Make the wiser choice. Let us show you how We Help Harder at Wise Owl.
