Home Health & Hospice Week

April start date passes and CMS pledges 'soon.'

Once again, waiting is the name of the game for home medical equipment suppliers.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pledged to begin accepting bids in the program's first phase on April 30, but the agency had yet to announce the start of bidding several days later.

On May 1, a CMS official said the agency hoped to open the planned 60-day bidding window "soon."

The missed deadline came in spite of assurances by agency officials at the April 25 home health Open Door Forum. "We're expecting bidding to begin next week," said the agency's Joel Kaiser at the forum, referencing the April 30 date.

Resource: Suppliers looking for up-to-the-minute information on the program should sign up for emailed notifications at the Web site of the Competitive Bidding Implementation Contractor (CBIC) at www.dmecompetitivebid.com, the agency advised.

Don't Miss These Announcements

CMS officials kept suppliers busy by announcing several competitive bidding corrections and clarifications during the forum.

• Code corrections. CMS has removed HCPCS code E0194 (air fluidized bed) from the products subject to competitive bidding. Since that was the sole Group 3 code written into the category, only Group 2 support surfaces are now included in the program.

CMS also dropped HCPCS code A4255 (platforms for home blood glucose monitor, 50 per box) from the mail-order diabetic supplies product category.
For the current list of codes included in each category, go to the CBIC site.

• Networks. CMS' Sandra Bastinelli referred listeners trying to define the word "network" for competitive bidding purposes to the agency's quality standards.

In a nutshell: Networks must have at least one leader with "the authority, responsibility and accountability to direct the organization and its key activities and operations."

• Capped rental clarification. Suppliers bidding on capped-rental items should submit "purchase" price bids, Kaiser reminded forum listeners. That's because CMS has always calculated the rental fee schedule payments using historic purchase prices, he explained. The same practice will apply to payments under competitive bidding.

Details: For rental months one through three, Medicare will pay 10 percent of the purchase price for equipment rentals; for rental months four through 13, the payment equals 7.5 percent of the purchase price.

• Coming resources. Kaiser announced that CMS was about to release on the CBIC site new spreadsheets that would help suppliers prepare their bids. The spreadsheets, one for each competitive bidding area (CBA), consolidate product category information,  definitions of the area by zip code, and types of bid accepted for each type of product (i.e., rental or purchase).

Tip: The CBAs don't exactly follow the boundaries of the Metropolitan Statistical Areas on which they are based. Check by zip code to see if the areas you serve are included. 

Note: The quality standards are available at www.cms.hhs.gov/CompetitiveAcqforDMEPOS/04_New_Quality_Standards.asp. For the "network" definition, click on and download "New Quality Standards for Suppliers of Durable Medical Equipment, Prosthet-ics, Orthotics and Supplies" and refer to the first quality standard under the "Business Services" heading.