Home Health & Hospice Week

It may not be easy for the competitive bidding program to comply with a statutory requirement regarding diabetic test strips. Law "requires that future rounds of competitive bidding program contracts for mail order diabetic testing strips be awarded to suppliers who provide at least 50 percent, by volume, of all types of mail order diabetic testing strips," the OIG notes in a new report. But the market is quite varied. Two types of diabetic testing strips accounted for 26 percent of the Medicare mail order market share, seven types of diabetic testing strips accounted for 50 percent of the Medicare mail order market share, and 19 types accounted for approximately 81 percent, the OIG found in a sample of 2009 claims. The report is at http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-04-10-00130.asp.