Home Health & Hospice Week

Your patients might have even more of a hassle securing durable medical equipment and supplies they need, if the HHS Office of Inspector General gets its way.

The OIG suggests that CMS and Medicaid programs could save money if they adopted competitive bidding payment rates for DMEPOS, according to a new report. "In FFY 2011, the Texas Medicaid fee-schedule amounts for 30 of the 32 DMEPOS items exceeded the payment amounts under the Medicare DMEPOS Competitive Bidding Program," the OIG explains. "During this period, Texas Medicaid spent approximately $12 million on these 32 items in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. If it had used the payment amounts from the Medicare Competitive Bidding Program, Medicaid could have saved approximately $2 million (State and Federal shares combined)."

Bottom line: "Our findings provide a tangible example of potential State and Federal savings for Medicaid programs if the programs were to use the Medicare Competitive Bidding Program payment amounts for DMEPOS items," the OIG says. The DME bidding program now covers 100 metro areas. "If the State Medicaid programs were to use the Medicare Competitive Bidding Program amounts — rather than the State Medicaid fee-schedule amounts — the States and the Federal Government could achieve savings," the OIG says.

The report is at http://go.usa.gov/DbsR.