Home Health & Hospice Week

Associations rally to further delay implementation.

Suppliers of home medical equipment have won a slight extension in their deadlines for competitive bidding, but keep in mind: The race is still on.

Suppliers affected by phase one of competitive bidding for Medicare-covered durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics and supplies (DMEPOS) should assume the program will proceed as planned, cautions Jeffrey Baird, attorney with Brown & Fortunato in Amarillo, TX.

On June 29, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced extensions to the deadlines for registering for a user ID and password and for submitting bids.

New deadlines: The new registration deadline is July 7. The original registration deadline was June 30. All bids are now due by 9 p.m. Eastern Time on July 20. The accreditation deadline for the first round of competitive bidding is Aug. 31.

Downside: The extensions give suppliers only four extra business days to register and five additional business days to bid.

"We are grateful for the extra week, but, frankly, the extensions won't help much," says Baird. The extra time will do little to resolve serious shortcomings of the program, insiders say.

"There's no complete and consistent information out there," says Baird.

Example: The Competitive Bidding Implementation Contractor's definition of "commonly owned supplier" conflicts with the definition set forth in the final rule, says Baird. Act Now To Secure Further Delay Though experts urge suppliers to assume the program will proceed as planned, groups representing suppliers and beneficiaries are forging ahead with efforts to further delay program implementation.

The American Association for Homecare has joined with several other trade groups in Washington, DC, to sway members of the House and Senate to sign letters that seek a delay in competitive bidding implementation and an extension in the online bidding window.

The groups, which include the Advanced Medical Technology Association, the Health Industry Distributors Association, and National Association for Support of Long Term Care, contend that the program should be delayed pending clarification from CMS on key questions.

In addition, a lawsuit filed June 12 in a Texas federal court has the potential to halt the implementation of Medicare's competitive bidding program (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XVI, No. 23).

In the meantime, CMS continues to aim for an April 2008 start of phase one of competitive bidding.