Home Health & Hospice Week

Besides ordering physician issues, DME suppliers have another problem with PECOS -- not being able to use it for their own enrollment.

Durable medical equipment suppliers would like to be able to check their enrollment status online, noted one supplier calling into the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' July 7 Open Door Forum for home care providers.

But CMS now plans to delay suppliers' utilization of the Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System until fall. "Internet-based PECOS will not have the capability to accommodate the submission of a DMEPOS supplier enrollment application any earlier than fall 2010," CMS says in an updated "Getting Started" PECOS guide for suppliers. "Until then, DMEPOS suppliers must continue to fill out the CMS-855S paper enrollment application and mail the application to the National Supplier Clearinghouse Medicare Administrative Contractor (NSC)." Suppliers hope PECOS will help with delays like one experienced by Cindy Coy with Avera Home Medical Equipment in Sioux Falls, S.D. Avera sent in its re-enrollment information last August and just received a reply this month, Coy told CMS.

The NSC is just now getting to re-enrollments because it has had other priorities to work on, said CMS's Jim Bossenmeyer in the call.

Resource: A link to the guide is at www.cms.gov/MedicareProviderSupEnroll/04_InternetbasedPECOS.asp -- scroll down to the "Downloads" section.