Home Health & Hospice Week

Wheelchair suppliers may face even more red tape in furnishing items to Medicare beneficiaries, thanks to a new HHS Office of Inspector General report.

The OIG "found that 61 percent of power wheelchairs provided to Medicare beneficiaries in the first half of 2007 were medically unnecessary or had claims that lacked sufficient documentation to determine medical necessity," the watchdog says in a new report (OEI-04-09-00260). These power wheelchairs accounted for $95 million of the $189 million that Medicare allowed for power wheelchairs during this period.

The OIG wants the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to "enhance" reenrollment screening for current suppliers and review records from non-supplier sources such as the prescribing physician. But CMS disagreed with the OIG about tougher reenrollment screening. New fraud-fighting tools passed in the Affordable Care Act already allow for increased scrutiny of DME suppliers, the agency says in its response to the OIG report, which is online at http://go.usa.gov/Zvm.