Home Health & Hospice Week

You might have to renegotiate your contracts with suppliers.

If you think you're safe from the impact of DMEPOS competitive bidding because you're a home health agency, think again.

Bidding is likely to affect your contracts with suppliers of durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics and supplies and your relationship with patients, warned Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Carol Blackford at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice's annual policy conference in Washington, DC.

Bidding "will certainly indirectly impact you," Blackford told the audience at the April 23 conference.

Under the recently issued bidding final rule, in 2008 Medicare will limit provision of 10 categories of DMEPOS in 10 cities to only those suppliers who win the bid for those items. (For bidding items and other details, see Eli's HCW, Vol. XVI, No. 12). Bidding will spread to 70 cities the next year.

Areas affected: The first 10 areas subject to bidding are Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach, FL, Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, NC-SC, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX, Orlando-Kissimmee, FL, River-side-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA, Pittsburgh, PA, Kansas City, MO-KS, Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN, San Juan-Caguas-Guaynabo, PR, and Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH.

That means if you're an HHA in those cities and you contract with a supplier who bills Medicare for the DMEPOS your patients receive, you'll no longer be able to contract with that provider for the items subject to bidding, Blackford explained.

Nationwide restriction: Furthermore, CMS put mail-order diabetic supplies up for bid on a nationwide basis, Blackford said. If you use a nationwide mail-order supplier for diabetic supplies that it bills to Medicare, you won't be able to contract with that supplier unless it wins the nationwide bid.

And even if you don't contract with a certain supplier, many of your patients may have to switch their suppliers of oxygen, CPAPs, enteral nutrition and other bid items, Blackford predicted. "It's important from a patient education perspective" that you know and can explain bidding, she stressed.

CMS Sets Supplier Accreditation Deadline

If you're in one of the first 10 bidding areas, you may want to touch base with your supplier and see if it is planning to bid. Suppliers are expected to start bidding very soon and must have accreditation by Aug. 30 to win a bidding contract, Blackford pointed out.

Beware: A few HHAs bill for DMEPOS on their home health claims with an HHA provider number, NAHC's Mary St. Pierre noted in the session. They probably won't be able to do that any longer under bidding, Blackford suggested. CMS will clarify such details as bidding proceeds, she added.