Home Health & Hospice Week

CMS may not be releasing details about the financial standards for the durable medical equipment competitive bidding program, but you'll still find out if you didn't meet them. CMS will tell suppliers why they didn't win a bidding contract, explained CMS's Joel Kaiser in the May 26 Open Door Forum for home care providers. That includes telling them if they didn't meet the program's financial standards. Suppliers also got a bit of clarification about a recent transmittal regarding Medicare Advantage enrollment and bidding. To qualify for the bidding grandfathering exception, beneficiaries must be enrolled in an MA plan when bidding starts on Jan.1, 2011. If that's the case, when they come off the MA plan, they can still receive DME from their existing, non-contract supplier. "The beneficiary does have to have been in a Medicare Advantage plan at the start of competitive bidding, just like any other grandfathered beneficiary," Kaiser explained.