Home Health & Hospice Week

Impact:  If you were paid $6,500 last month, expect $3,800 come Nov. 15.

Expect Medicare payments to dwindle if the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services decides to roll with its new fee schedule for power mobility devices (PMDs). The new rates for PMDs are to set to take effect on Nov. 15.

Many of the new fee schedule amounts are "totally unreasonable" and should be corrected, said Seth Johnson, chair of the American Association for Homecare Rehab and Assistive Technology Council, in a statement issued by the American Association for Homecare.

The new fee schedule, released Oct. 2, is based on CMS' "gap filling method," notes Eric Sokol of the Power Mobility Coalition. 

The gap-filling method is flawed and fails to take patient needs into account, charge many manufacturers and suppliers, including Sokol's group.

Hardest hit: High end products, typically used by severely disabled consumers, face payment reductions of up to 41 percent, a cut that many say will create problems with access.

"This will prevent these disabled consumers from having access to the appropriate power wheelchair, unless they are affluent enough to pay for the wheelchair themselves," said Elyria, OH-based Invacare Corp. in a written statement. Speak Out Against Cuts, Stakeholders Say The proposed fee schedule calls for substantial cuts in rehab reimbursement, which would significantly limit access to the medically appropriate power mobility device for the disabled community, charges a spokesperson for Invacare.

Invacare and others are calling on CMS to retract the fee schedule altogether.

More cuts: For consumer/geriatric mobility, the proposed fee schedule calls for reductions of 21 to 44 percent.

In the last eight years, utilization of PMDs has soared about 2,700 percent, according to CMS. But stakeholders note that over the last three years, CMS has responded to the increased demand with a series of policy, rule and pricing changes that have already brought demand down to acceptable levels.

"What we have is a regulatory body that has been focused on restricting access to the benefit," said Scott Meuser, CEO of Pride USA, a major manufacturer of mobility equipment, in a statement after the fee schedule's release. "Now, they have gone too far." Note: To see the PMD fee schedule, go to www.cms.hhs.gov/DMEPOSFeeSched/01a_Power_Mobility_Devices.asp