11 Things Enterprise Buyers Should Check Beyond Star Ratings When Comparing DME Platforms

A star rating tells you how satisfied past customers were on average. It doesn’t tell you whether a platform is actively developing, accepting new clients, or built to handle the specific scale your enterprise operates at today, let alone in three years. Anyone researching DME Works reviews as part of a broader platform comparison should look past the rating itself and check a handful of specifics that matter more for a multi-location decision than an aggregate score ever will. Here are eleven to add to your evaluation checklist.

1. Whether the vendor is actively accepting new clients

This may sound simple, but you don’t want to rely on assumption; if it is a platform that is around for years and has a large customer base, there is no need to do this. If you’re in the middle of an evaluation and only discover that some DME billing platforms have ceased to accept new customers, it can make a huge difference if you’re in the middle of a weeks-long procurement process.

2. How recently the platform has been meaningfully updated

A platform that’s been around for years and has a loyal following doesn’t always mean that it’s still under active development. Then ask specifically what it is that has been shipped in the past year, not just how long the company has been around or how many customers it has served. Longevity isn’t necessarily a sign of how active the firm has been and how many customers it has had—these are two different metrics that are often confused.

3. Whether reviews reflect single-location or multi-location use

Even if both reviews come from the same review site and from providers of the same DME, they answer different questions. Beware of reviews from other filters that don’t rate in your scale because they could be from a one-truck filter and it’s not necessarily going to fit what you’re looking for.

4. What reviewers say about support responsiveness at volume

It sounds like support for a small customer base can be a significant constraint when a platform has thousands of locations, and it hasn’t kept up with customer growth in terms of staffing. Check the reviews for specific information about response time and escalation routes, as well as the overall satisfaction ratings, which may include generalities that an enterprise buyer can’t stomach.

5. How inventory and asset tracking is described in real usage

While generally not in-depth, a review of billing will typically include questions about the inventory functionality — look for comments on reorder points, service tracking by location, and stock visibility. This is where many legacy platforms show their age fastest, and where dedicated DME inventory software tends to pull noticeably ahead once an organization operates more than a couple of sites.

6. Whether integration capability is described as open or custom-built

If reviews include a requirement for custom development for each new integration, then it’s a closed architecture. Even if the review rates the platform’s billing core functionality highly, it still describes a closed architecture. The same is true for an enterprise buyer who will be subjecting a second system that will need to communicate with the first, compared to a single location buyer who never has to fall back to communicate with another system.

7. What happens to data if you eventually need to migrate away

In an uncomfortable way of putting it, but let’s ask the question that we should ask during the sales process: What does Data Export and Migration really mean if you move from one platform to another in 3 years? If the vendor knows their answer, it is one the customer can easily follow and is specific, not a question or an accusation.

8. How the vendor talks about compliance and security specifics

Being “compliant” is not the same as a vendor who can point to the SOC 2 of which they are a part, provide details about their HIPAA controls, or state they can assist with the DMEPOS accreditation documentation. Follow up any “vague” review or sales discussion that doesn’t address this issue with another specific question in the evaluation process.

9. Whether pricing scales predictably or requires a new negotiation every time

There are some platforms with clear published pricing tiers based upon location count and/or claim volume, and others which will do a deal on a case-by-case basis with no obvious rationale for the numbers. The second option is not necessarily bad, but it makes it harder to budget for future growth, which matters more for an enterprise buyer than for a single-location buyer signing a much smaller contract.

10. Whether the vendor offers real migration support, not just a sales pitch about ease of switching

Each vendor company says that it’s easy to migrate to its platform. Much fewer can explain in detail what the data migration process will entail, how long it will take, or how it will support an organization of that size, once a contract is signed, and the process is not theoretical, but real.

The star ratings should be used as a starting point, rather than an end point, especially when the choice will impact the entire organization for years to come, both in terms of billing, inventory, and reporting. For a specific enterprise DME, the above attributes are more likely to help determine satisfaction over time than any single score alone, and they’re worth the additional hour of research before signing a contract.

11. How the vendor describes its roadmap for AI and automation

Don’t just ask what it can do now, but what it is going to do specifically with regard to AI-based claims scrubbing, claims denial prediction, or resupply automation in the next year? The only way to avoid needing a subsequent migration in a couple of years is to find a vendor that has a solid and specific answer here.

None of this is “bad” or “scary” when it comes to reading reviews; it’s just the opposite: it’s an argument for reading reviews in a specific way. Look for key phrases relevant to your assessment, such as “multi-location,” “API,” or “support response time,” instead of just scanning for sentiment. Sometimes, a modest average rating but strong ratings across the dimensions that are important to your organization is a better choice than a higher average rating that is constructed mainly from the reviews of single locations that won’t be the ones you rely on for day-to-day use.