Home Health & Hospice Week

Bidding, surety bonds also discussed in Open Door Forum. The October accreditation deadline for durable medical equipment is on top of suppliers' priority lists, with good reason -- it could sink your company if you don't comply. If a supplier isn't accredited by Oct. 1, it will face revocation of its Medicare billing privileges, warned the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the June 30 Open Door Forum for home care providers. And an important part of accreditation will be ensuring that your subcontractors are also accredited, noted CMS's Sandra Bastinelli in the call. The supplier standards allow for only a few narrow exceptions to that accreditation requirement. For example: Subcontractors who furnish delivery and instruction on your equipment must be accredited, Bastinelli noted. But subcontractors who just drop-ship products with no instruction -- like FedEx -- don't need accreditation. Real-life scenario:Many suppliers called in to the forum with questions about accreditation [...]