Convalescent Aid Society

Convalescent Aid Society (CAS) seeks to provide needed durable medical equipment (DME) to area residents at no cost, no time restriction and with minimal hassle.

Our goal is to help every area resident acquire the medical equipment they need so that they can retain (or regain) their independence. Often, one or two pieces of DME – like a commode or a shower chair – can be enough to enable someone to remain in their home, surrounded by their family in a comfortable, familiar and peaceful setting.

Besides the financial benefit of loaning DME to locals, our services also reduce stress. In fact, we are often the “easiest part” for families to navigate in an increasingly complicated healthcare maze. By making the process easy for clients to borrow needed medial items from us, families can concentrate their effort and energy in other areas to help a loved one. Keeping our services free continues to be a priority.

Finally, CAS recognizes the role that reuse can play in helping reduce our impact on the environment. For every piece of DME that can be reused, we are able to reduce the use of materials needed for manufacturing, emissions from production and transportation of items, and landfill space when feasible items are discarded before their usable life is over.

Convalescent Aid Society is a vital part of an interconnected healthcare ecosystem in the area. Each hospital in our service footprint lists CAS in their discharge planning documents, and social workers/discharge coordinators all refer patients (and their families) here as a simple way to help ensure a safe and timely exit from the hospital. We have cultivated these relationships by providing service to thousands of patients in recent years so we are recognized as a trusted resource for these professionals.

One key strategy for making sure enough equipment is available has been the creation of a series of “Remote Donation Sites” in our service area. These partner agencies serve as easily accessible hyper-local spaces for residents to donate equipment for use by our clients. The more than two dozen partner agencies and businesses serving in this capacity have been instrumental in helping CAS collect record amounts of DME to put back into service locally.

The final strategy that we have employed to help reach our goal of providing equipment to any resident who needs it is by diligently being stewards of our resources. This objective is met in two main ways: first, by verifying residency (which ensures that borrowed equipment stays in the community) and second, by following up with families on a regular basis to make sure that items on loan continue to be needed. If we discover that a borrowed item is not serving a client, but has not been returned yet, we can encourage families to return the equipment to our warehouse so that it can be redeployed to another individual in need.

For an agency with 30,000 pieces on loan, we have a modest loss-rate on borrowed items with between 6%-7% of items ultimately lost. Considering that we collect no deposit, this is a considerable feat.

In the past five years, we have more than doubled the number of items loaned out on an annual basis. This speaks to our capabilities to meet demand and shows that the strategies mentioned previously have been successful.

For the next increase in service delivery, CAS is looking to expand our reach to new communities that are not being served by our operations and do not have a similar agency available in their area. Because of the efficiencies of our delivery model, there is a great opportunity to replicate these processes in a new location, thereby helping additional families that have no other options.

Mainly, by collecting equipment from residents that currently have no other donation option, we’ll quickly be able to build out an inventory of DME that will be ready to loan out. Our capability for service delivery in a new area also depends on building and maintaining partnerships with area hospitals, orthopedic surgeons, home health care agencies, Geriatric Care Managers, long-term care facilities and other health care providers. We feel confident that we’ll be able to build out a network comprised of these pieces because the services that CAS provides (for free) allow each one of these segments to better focus on their specialty.

By enabling independence for our users, we often hear that they experience greater happiness, faster recovery and reduced instances of hospital re-admittance or further injury. Because all of our loaned items are provided free of charge, for each item we loan out, we’ve saved the community the retail cost of that item. In the last fiscal year, the retail cost of the items CAS put into service in the area would have been roughly $2.8 million.

Besides the cost-savings of our service, another accomplishment of our model is that for every item loaned out, we redirect a piece of equipment from the landfill and/or prevent strain on the environment due to manufacturing. In fact, since our equipment is loaned out an average of four times during its usable life, the impact on the environment is multiplied by a factor of four. This means reduced drain on minerals, pollution from manufacturing and transportation and packaging.

Next up for Convalescent Aid Society is opening up our valuable service to more residents in the Los Angeles Area. We are exploring the addition of a second location, which would allow CAS to replicate our service model to a whole new group of people.