Home Health & Hospice Week

Providers with patients who need power mobility devices are still waiting to hear when a demonstration requiring prior authorization for them will begin -- but it appears to be soon.

Background: Under the demo, CMS will implement a prior authorization process for scooters and power wheelchairs for people with Medicare who reside in seven states with high populations of fraud- and error-prone providers -- California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Florida, and Texas, the agency says on its website. At the beginning of the year, CMS delayed the demo to consider extensive comments it received on the proposed structure.

Now CMS says it expects the demo to begin "in Summer 2012." A caller in the May 23 Open Door Forum for home care providers asked what date exactly that meant, but didn't receive an answer.

CMS will hold an ODF call on the demo on June 28. When the agency delayed the demo earlier this year, it said it would provide 30 days notice before implementing it.

Resource: More information about the demo, including a newly modified flowchart of how the prior authorization process will work, is online at www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Monitoring-Programs/CERT/PADemo.html.