Make Your HOA Into an HMO by Arthur Raybold

The purpose of a health maintenance organization is not only to provide its members with medical personnel and facilities but also to provide them with knowledge and programs that enable them to maintain their health through exercise, diet, rest and medicine.

Two very large HOA's are currently employing evidentiary medicine to provide members appropriate medicine now to save them from a much worse and always more expensive fate later.

One of these, Aetna U.S. Healthcare,  has found that beta blockers that cost $6.00/month for a heart patient will reduce the risk of spending $15,000. to treat a heart attack later.

Maintaining your stucco, wood and metal is not much different from maintaining your skin, bones and organs. The putting off  today to an uncertain tomorrow is no different from the patient's laxity in taking the beta blockers. The cost consequence can be equally devastating.

The first step in becoming an HMO requires establishing a medical group that specializes in diagnostics. Also known as the Paint Committee, these diagnosticians will be looking for chipping, peeling, cracking, chalking, rotting, warping, rusting, staining, bubbling, delaminating, fading and oxidizing. Not looking in the mirror regularly means missing the ravages of time. If you paint your stucco every 10 years, your wood every five and your iron every two, most of these symptoms will not appear.

However, extreme conditions-water and sun-can reduce the life of a repaint as well as acts of commission-letting sprinklers hit stucco, wood and iron month after month.

When you see rusting, cracking, delaminating or mildew, correct it immediately. Don't wait three more years until the wood or stucco is due to be painted. The cost will be far greater if you wait.

A condominium that created a master plan to repaint sections in four phases was shocked when the final phase in the fourth year required four times as much wood replacement. They had not put aside enough reserves and were determined to spend the same amount as they had the first three years. That association's buildings were headed for a heart attack for want of beta blockers.

Ask your paint contractor to accompany your Painting Committee on its semi-annual or annual walk. He can point out those symptoms that need immediate attention versus those that can wait. If surfaces were adequately prepared and good products were used at the time of repaint, you are not looking at an expensive maintenance item. Depending on the warranty, you may have no expense at all.

Use the evidentiary medicine approach. Act on the evidence discovered by your Paint Committee and you will be well on the way towards making your HOA into an HMO.