3 minute read

CEO’s Message

Not Your “Average” Price Survey

By Danny Langfield

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NMEDA CEO

On March 6, 2020, NMEDA concluded our Annual Conference & Expo with the traditional awards banquet and Hall of Fame inductions. Six days later, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and the world essentially ground to a halt.

Here we are nearly a year later, and for the vast majority of us, the 2020 NMEDA event was our last large group gathering experience. As vaccinations become more readily available and we see light at the end of this very, very long tunnel, can we start to look forward—maybe, just a little bit?—to September and our co-located conference with ADED? Is it possible that we all may be able to see each other again, in person, in Columbus? and now they may be opening back up just in time for us to get everyone back together for the 2021 show. Obviously, we will only meet in person if both organizations’ leadership equipment. This year, however, will be different. Here’s why.

As part of the long-delayed rulemaking necessary to implement the Veterans Mobility Safety Act (VMSA), the VA released a proposed rule in March 2020 which, among other things, referenced the NMEDA Average Price Survey. Specifically, the VA will be relying on NMEDA’s Average Price Survey to establish the department’s payment schedule for adaptive equipment. In the interest of ensuring that VA is provided with the most comprehensive, detailed, and accurate pricing information, we have refreshed the survey’s equipment categories and terminology to reflect the current technical and equipment

As the saying goes, I’d rather be lucky than good—and make no mistake, we may have gotten very lucky. This is the one time in NMEDA’s history when our annual conferences will be 18 months apart instead of 12, and it just happens to be the exact period when a pandemic strikes? The gates slammed down immediately after the completion of our 2020 conference, determine it can be done safely, so no promises, time will tell…but it sure is an exciting prospect.

Ok, on to my assigned topic, the NMEDA Average Price Survey. As most of you are aware, every two years the association surveys its dealer members to determine the prevailing price of auto adaptive landscape of our industry. You can expect the new and improved survey to hit your inboxes in February.

I imagine it could go without saying (but I’ll say it anyway)…this year’s Average Price Survey carries substantially more weight than in years past.

To that end, we will be asking every member location to complete the survey. I apologize in advance for any persistence on our part that may border on annoying; but we simply HAVE to have this data, and it has to be right.

NMEDA has contracted with Dynamic Benchmarking to provide services related to the anonymized collection of this data as well as a web-based presentation of results. This means dealers will eventually be able to log into the system and compare their responses to the 25th percentile, median, and 75th percentile of other respondents.

In related news, the beta testing of the new QAPx system, designed for the digital administration of QAP, will begin in Q1 of 2021. Much more to come on QAPx, of course, but down the road we hope to be able to export the data collected in QAPx and DocuTrack (currently collected on the Label Reporting Form) and make it available for similar benchmarking analytics.

In other words, NMEDA is working toward providing meaningful, actionable business intelligence on industry data for our members— something the auto mobility industry has been sorely lacking.

So, plenty going on in the new year! Please be sure to respond promptly and accurately to the survey…because this year’s Average Price Survey will be anything but average.

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