Home Health & Hospice Week

Approved amendments also restores first-month purchase options.

The U.S. Senate has approved a fiscal 2006 budget reconciliation package that discontinues the extended capped rental option for durable medical equipment--but the legislation exempts power wheelchairs from the change.

A group of lawmakers led by Sens. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and George Voinovich (R-OH) offered an amendment exempting power chairs, which the full Senate approved Nov. 3.

Besides ending capped rentals for DME, the original measure also would have put power chairs on par with other DME by moving the purchase option for chairs from the first month to the 10th (see HCW, Vol. XIV, No, 39). Under the approved Santorum-Voinovich amendment, beneficiaries still have the option of purchasing a chair in the first month.

The changes to the capped rental program raised concerns for some power chair suppliers. Beneficiaries usually choose to buy power chairs at the time they're furnished, since they typically need the equipment for life. But under the Senate's original changes, power chair suppliers would have had to wait 10 months to recoup the money to pay the vendor.

Brentwood, TN-based American HomePatient estimates that eliminating the capped rental provision would cost it $5.8 million annually.

Capped Rental Issue Divides Providers

The American Association for Homecare opposes discontinuing the capped rental option, arguing that shifting the responsibility for maintaining complex equipment to beneficiaries is unfair and even dangerous. But there are differing opinions on the capped rental issue among DME suppliers.

"Half of our members think capped rental is a good thing, half don't think it's a good thing, and the other half are not sure what to think," quips John Gallagher, vice president of government relations for Waterloo, IA-based VGM Associates.

When the feds first instituted the capped rental program in the early 1990s, DME suppliers fought against it, recalls Wayne Stanfield of the Home Care Alliance of Virginia. "Now we're fighting for it," he observes.

Stanfield has consulted with several DME providers since the Senate discontinued the capped rental option. "Not one provider I talked to said they wanted to keep the capped rental program," he reports, citing the program's complexity and low maintenance fee.

Forecast: The Senate is expected soon to go to conference with the House to work out their budget package differences, including the capped rental provision. Legislators could reinstate the wheelchair capped rental provision at that time and opt for other DME-related cuts on top of it, observers warn.