Home Health & Hospice Week

Providers are invited to join lobby effort challenging policy. Want to strike down Medicare's in-the-home restriction on mobility equipment? Well, get moving.

Durable medical equipment providers could see the restriction eliminated if an effort spearheaded by concerned lawmakers and supported by disability rights' advocates succeeds.

Reps. Charles Bass (R-NH) and Jim Langevin (D-RI) last week began circulating a letter to their colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives asking them to sign a letter to Health & Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt. The HHS letter asks Leavitt to modify the in-the-home restriction in order to improve community access for people with disabilities.

"The perpetuation of the 'in the home' restriction runs counter to important goals established in the Administration's New Freedom Initiative and legislation such as the 'Ticket to Work' program, which seeks to return people with disabilities back into the workforce and into communities," Bass and Langevin write.

Despite the fact that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services received more than 130 comments requesting reconsideration of the restriction in response to its draft National Coverage Determination on mobility equipment, the final NCD failed to address the issue, Bass and Langevin point out.

The letter to HHS asks Leavitt to change the restriction through the regulatory process. If that's not possible, the agency should respond as quickly as possible "so that Congress may begin examining legislative alternatives," it states. Contact Your Representative ASAP Get political: The Washington-based Independence Through the Enhancement of Medicare & Medicaid Coalition urges interested stakeholders to ask their representatives to sign the HHS letter.

Contact lawmakers by phone or via the Web site www.rightwheelchair.org, a joint project of the ITEM Coalition, United Spinal Association and Clinician Task Force.

"We feel this letter from Congress will help convey to the Department the urgent nature of the problem that the 'in the home' restriction presents to people with disabilities," says Lee Page of the Paralyzed Veterans of America and ITEM Coalition steering committee.

Meanwhile, the ITEM coalition is working with Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Rick Santorum (R-PA) on a similar "Dear Colleague" letter in the Senate, coalition spokesperson Emily Niederman tells Eli. 

Editor's Note: More details on the ITEM Coalition's initiative are at www.itemcoalition.org.