Erica Sell founded Harmony Home Medical, one of San Diego’s top medical supply stores, in 2008. The Kearny Mesa location is a 5500-square-foot showroom filled with medical products, equipment and supplies available for sale and for rent. Erica is a CAPS professional (Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist), an ATP (Assistive Technology Specialist) and a SRES (Senior Real Estate Specialist), so she and her team are eminently qualified to sell, rent, install or repair whatever you or your loved one need to remain safe at home. Harmony Home Medical’s mission is to help you understand all the solutions that exist to safely and independently Age-In-Place. We asked her some questions about how Harmony Home Medical continues to provide critical home medical supply and equipment to San Diego while adapting to COVID-19.
Are home medical supply businesses considered essential?
Yes, providing home medical products, equipment and supplies, including Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), to San Diegans is an essential business. We have an obligation to our current customers’ recurring needs as well as to meet new needs for items like mobility devices, powerchairs, hospital beds, and much more. COVID-19 is on everyone’s mind, naturally, but regular medical issues are still coming up. Customers who need a new chair, or a repair on an existing piece of equipment, can’t wait until it’s ‘over.’ We know our customers and their loved ones are still experiencing the same variety of illnesses, conditions and living situations that they were before COVID-19.
How has the COVID-19 response affected Harmony Home Medical?
One of our main concerns when the state issued the stay-at-home order in mid-March was being able to keep as many of our employees as possible working while continuing to serve our customers. We made some adjustments to hours and workdays, and we have kept all our people employed. The team we’ve built here is highly capable and their skill sets – in repair, installation, evaluation – are far too valuable to lose, even temporarily. We weren’t sure in the beginning how our customers would want to shop. Some customers have put in-home activity off until they’re more comfortable, but we’ve gained many new customers with the ways we’ve adapted to social distancing and COVID-19.
How has Harmony Home Medical adapted to COVID-19?
Our goal has been and continues to be staying open and available to serve San Diego’s essential medical supply needs, and so we developed an Emergency Action Plan. We’re still open during our normal operating hours at our Kearny Mesa location, with social distancing rules, and we’re just as responsive to phone or website inquiries. Here are some of the other changes we’ve made to ‘business as usual’:
- We’ll deliver purchases of any size to your home with newly discounted service charges.
- Our drivers are wearing protective masks and gloves on all service calls
- We’ve doubled the sanitization time for our rental equipment
- We’re asking customers to return rental equipment to the back of the store or call us from the parking lot for retrieval to reduce traffic in the store
- We have a full inventory of essentials to help families create care room at home for loved ones returning from an assisted living or skilled nursing facility
We’re doing our best to create a supportive, calm, positive and stress-free experience for our customers. These are uncertain times to start with, and our clients are often experiencing additional stress from the medical issue that brought them to us.
Does Harmony Home Medical have ‘COVID-19’ supplies available?
We have secured a wide range of ‘COVID-19’ supplies, including KN-95 masks, surgical masks, disposable gowns, hand sanitizer, and infrared no-touch thermometers. We also have oxygen concentrators, which are available with a prescription. We’re happy to sell by the piece or in bulk, if available. Please call us to confirm we have what you need in stock. As you have heard, quantities of these items are limited, and availability fluctuates because the demand is high.
Our mission hasn’t changed during the pandemic, but I can say that now, more than ever, we’re committed to our customers’ health. Our work has always been essential, because we have always supported people in home-based care with equipment and expert advice. This is an extraordinary situation, but the basics are the same: stay calm, stay positive, and stay connected. We are all in this together, and you can count on us to help.
Erica and Harmony Home Medical can be reached at 858-560-8177, or Erica[at]harmonyhomemedical[dot]com. You can also connect with Erica and the team on Facebook at @harmonyhomeSD/+
