DME Changes Could Make Life Easier
Published on Wed Jan 12, 2005
Some of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' proposed changes to DME paperwork and requirements could be a real boost to your office's efficiency. In particular, CMS proposes to:
Do away with the Certificates of Medical Necessity that physicians currently must sign to authorize hospital beds and support surfaces.
Allow physicians to use a signature-and-date stamp on the certificate for home oxygen instead of signing them by hand.
Remove the requirement to list the name and address of the provider who tested a patient's blood oxygen levels on the oxygen certificate.
Do away with the requirement that patients in power wheelchairs must be "bed- or chair-confined." Instead, physicians will analyze whether patients have a mobility impairment that prevents them from performing one or more activities of daily living at home, as well as the ability to use a wheelchair.
Expand codes for power wheelchairs and scooters from five to 49 codes to facilitate picking the correct code for a particular wheelchair.