Mini-Webinar Recording: You Hired Nurses, Not DME Coordinators

Hospice leaders are watching their nurses burn out, not from bedside care, but from logistics coordination. As demands on clinical teams grow, time spent on Durable Medical Equipment (DME) tasks like placing orders, chasing vendors, and resolving issues adds up fast.

This webinar, hosted by Natalie Jensen, Regional Director of Sales at Qualis, and introduced by Cortney Swartwood, Senior Marketing Manager, cuts straight to the problem and the solution. If your team is asking why nurses are managing DME instead of patients, this 13-minute session is a must-watch.

Key Takeaways:

✔️ The Real Impact of DME on Nurse Workload – 1:23
See how routine DME coordination is quietly draining 20–40+ hours from your care team each week.

✔️ It’s Not a People Problem, It’s a Process Problem – 3:45
Why nurses are frustrated and how misaligned workflows are pushing them to the brink.

✔️ Proactive DME Management = Time and Focus Restored – 6:55
What a smarter, centralized DME model looks like—and how it re-centers care where it belongs.

✔️ 40 Hours Saved, Without Sacrificing Clinical Control – 8:00
Real data from hospice partners on time savings and increased job satisfaction.

✔️ You Keep Vendor Choice and Patient-Centered Values – 9:11
Learn how Qualis improves process without compromising personal connections or control.

WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT

Cortney Swartwood [00:05]
Hey everyone and welcome. I am Cortney Swartwood, the Senior Marketing Manager here at Qualis. Thank you so much for joining our very first mini-webinar: You Hired Nurses, Not DME Coordinators.

Before we get started, I have a few tips and tricks to help you have a great webinar experience. On your screen, you'll see the key components for today’s session: the presentation, a Q&A window, and a survey. These windows are all resizable and movable—set them up however you'd like.

Please drop all of your questions into the Q&A window—not the chat. We’ll be using that section to track and answer questions. If you're experiencing any technical difficulties, use the Q&A as well and we’ll help you out there.

The survey window allows you to provide feedback on today’s session and request information about our solutions.

Finally, there’s a toolbar at the bottom of your screen with a resources icon—click it to download today’s slides.

This webinar is being recorded, and tomorrow you’ll get a link to the on-demand recording so you can rewatch or share it with your team.

Now with the housekeeping out of the way, I’ll hand it over to Natalie to introduce herself and get us started.

Natalie Jensen [01:23]
Hey, thanks Cortney. And hey everyone—thank you for joining us today for what we hope is a quick, transformative, and thought-provoking session. I’m Natalie Jensen, the Regional Director of Sales here at Qualis DME Management, and I’m really excited to spend a few minutes with you.

Today’s topic is You Hired Nurses, Not DME Coordinators. Let’s jump in.

In my role, I get to speak with hospice leaders across the country—clinical directors, CEOs, nurse managers—and this topic comes up constantly. There’s this growing realization that what was once a small operational annoyance has become a real drag on clinical teams’ time and energy.

Today we’re not just naming the issue—we’re talking about what to do about it.

The reality is that hospice nurses are incredible. They show up with compassion, immense clinical skills, and a true drive to care for patients and their families.

But here’s the truth: many of them are spending hours on tasks that have nothing to do with bedside care. Things like coordinating equipment, calling vendors, chasing deliveries, managing pickups, and fighting fax machines. Sound familiar?

A nurse I spoke with recently told me she spent her entire lunch break tracking down a concentrator for a patient who had just come onto service. This wasn’t a one-off for her—it was just her Thursday.

The DME process, while critical, has crept into clinical time in ways most people don’t fully realize. And it’s burning out your teams. Every minute a nurse spends tracking down a walker is a minute not spent with a patient or documenting care.

Let’s do some quick math. If one nurse spends 30 minutes a day managing DME tasks, that’s 2.5 hours a week. Multiply that across your team—5 nurses equals 12.5 hours; 10 nurses, 25 hours or more of non-clinical admin drain every week.

It’s just not sustainable. And I want to stress, this isn’t about wasted time—it’s about opportunity cost. What care isn’t being delivered because of this? What conversations aren’t happening? What families are unintentionally overlooked?

These are hard questions—but important ones.

When we ask nurses and care teams what they want, the answer is simple. They want to care for patients. They want to sit, to listen, to advocate, to comfort. They didn’t go into hospice to play logistics coordinator or troubleshoot equipment.

They went into hospice to make a difference at the bedside. But how often are they forced to do something else?

One clinical director told me, “We train our nurses on empathy, end-of-life support, symptom management... and then we ask them to make six calls to get a bed delivered.”

It’s inefficient. And it disconnects nurses from their purpose. And when that happens—when there’s dissonance between values and tasks—we dramatically increase the risk of burnout.

This is about working smarter, not harder, with systems that take the burden off your clinical team.

So what does that look like?

It looks like centralized DME coordination. Integrated software that ties directly into your EMR. Vendor-neutral access. Utilization oversight. One invoice. One process. One point of contact.

At Qualis, we call it proactive DME management. But the point is—your nurses shouldn’t have to think about this stuff. We just do it for them.

Let me be clear—this isn’t about replacing your team’s involvement. It’s about refocusing it. Your clinical staff should direct care—not direct delivery trucks. We handle the infrastructure so they can stay focused where they’re needed most.

When we lift this burden, we see real results: 40 or more hours per month saved across care teams. Increased nurse satisfaction. Lower burnout. Better CAHPS scores.

One partner told us that after switching to Qualis, their nurses started ending their days on time. Not because they had fewer patients—but because they had fewer distractions.

That’s what a good system should do. Clear the path for purpose-driven work.

If anything in today’s session resonates with you—if you’re feeling the tension between what your nurses could be doing and what they’re actually doing—this is your sign: there’s a better way.

If your nurses are spending too much time on DME, it’s not a people problem—it’s a process problem.

And we can fix that.

You hired nurses—not DME coordinators.

Cortney Swartwood [07:32]
Amazing. Thanks so much, Natalie. That was a super helpful session. Really great breakdown of why it does more harm than good to have nurses wrapped up in DME coordination on top of everything else.

Q&A Session

Cortney Swartwood [07:47]
We have a few questions to go over. First: How exactly do you calculate that 40-hour time saving?

Natalie Jensen [08:04]
Great question. That number comes from real-world data from hospice partners with an ADC around 50. We track time spent on DME coordination—ordering, resolving issues, managing invoices, vendor communication—and then centralize that through Qualis.

Consistently, we see savings of up to 40 hours per week across the care team. It varies depending on the team’s size and structure, but the lift is very real.

Cortney Swartwood [08:47]
We’ll be diving into that more in a later webinar. It’s eye-opening—40 hours a week is an entire person’s workload.

Natalie Jensen [09:02]
Definitely.

Cortney Swartwood [09:04]
Next question: Does using Qualis mean we lose control or choice over our vendors?

Natalie Jensen [09:11]
Not at all. That’s a common concern. Our model is vendor-neutral. We work with a nationwide network of quality providers, but you can maintain relationships with your trusted vendors or access new ones for specialized needs.

We’re here to centralize the process—not limit your options. You always have the final say.

Cortney Swartwood [09:55]
Makes complete sense. Next: Would switching to a DME management solution feel too “corporate” or disconnected?

Natalie Jensen [10:15]
That’s an important question. After implementation, most nurses feel relief—not frustration. We’re not removing them from the process, we’re removing the friction.

Your nurses still make the clinical decisions—they just aren’t bogged down by the back-and-forth. We’re built for hospice. Your teams stay engaged where it matters most.

Cortney Swartwood [10:51]
Last question for today: What kind of onboarding or training does Qualis provide?

Natalie Jensen [11:06]
We offer full implementation support—training for clinical and admin staff, system walkthroughs, and ongoing education. We tailor the onboarding to your structure and move at your pace.

No two hospices are the same, so we design our services to be flexible. Our goal is a smooth, disruption-free transition. Our next webinar, hosted by Hall Thorp, will talk more about this—Scared to Switch? Here’s How 95% of the Work Gets Done For You.

Cortney Swartwood [11:59]
Great plug for next week’s webinar. And that last question about patient experience—we’ll save that one for Hall too.

Natalie Jensen [12:25]
Sounds good.

Cortney Swartwood [12:30]
Thank you, Natalie. And thanks to everyone who joined us today. If you have follow-up questions, Natalie’s email is on the screen. Please complete the survey before you go—we appreciate your feedback.

Have a great day!

Natalie Jensen [13:02]
Thanks all.

Cortney Swartwood [13:03]
Take care, everyone. Bye!