Home Health & Hospice Week

Competitive bidding for durable medical equipment may take a bit longer to come to your area, if it hasn't already arrived.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced a six-month delay to Round 2 of DME competitive bidding at the Program Advisory and Oversight Committee (PAOC) meeting April 4. Round 1 of bidding went into effect Jan. 1 in nine metro areas. Round 2 will expand the program to 91 metro areas.

Under the delay, contract winners will be announced in Spring 2013 and the prices and contracts would start in the Summer of 2013, notes the American Association for Homecare.

The delay is welcome news for suppliers and their clients, but "the truth is that no matter how CMS tries to tweak its competitive bidding program, it will continue to be a fundamentally bad deal for our nation's seniors and small businesses," insists Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) in a release.

"Auction and bidding experts have resoundingly agreed that the program does not work," Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) says. "Delaying round two only kicks the can to a future date."

Suppliers should continue to push their representatives to support the bill to repeal the bidding program, which Altmire and Thompson introduced in March (H.R. 1041), AAHomecare says. The trade group "has received hundreds of complaints about the bidding program from beneficiaries, physicians, case managers, and homecare providers. These complaints will increase exponentially as the program progresses because the payment rates established under this system are unsustainable over the long term," it says in a release.

Twenty-three consumer groups ranging from the Muscular Distrophy Association to the National Family Caregivers Association recently sent the congressmen a letter thanking them for introducing the legislation, AAHomecare points out. The bill has 53 cosponsors, including 30 Republicans and 23 Democrats.