Editor's Note

Maintain The Intensity

Keep the bidding complaints coming.

• By David Kopf
• Jan 26, 2011

It seems like yesterday CMS was implementing Round One of competitive bidding and unleashing a flood of complaints from providers and patients about how poorly implemented the process was. So much has changed since those crazy days of 2008 that I can hardly even recognize the Medicare funding environment of 2011.

Oh wait ... I’m sorry. Nothing has changed. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Providers and patients are still stuck with a program that is already generating a massive HME gripe-fest. Various industry entities including the American Association for Homecare, the National Association of Independent Medical Equipment Suppliers, CSI:HME, and the VGM Group, established two websites, www.competitivebiddingconcerns.com and www.biddingfeedback.com, as well as a toll-free telephone number, 888-990-0499, to collect concerns about the competitive bidding program.

Well the complaints have been rolling in. That’s good news of a sort. No one wants to see patient access to care undermined, but if CMS’s misguided national competitive bidding program is doing it, then the onus is on providers to collect each and every problematic event associated with the bid program. That’s the only way to stop this Medicare mistake.

Why am I saying this if complaints are already coming? Because providers must maintain the pace and intensity of incoming complaints. We face a chilling political reality: the massive changeover in the last mid-term election means that the industry will have to work even harder to regain the bipartisan support to repeal competitive bidding that it enjoyed in the 111th Congress. A key asset in helping the industry retrace that footwork with the 112th Congress’s freshmen lawmakers lies in generating an overwhelming amount of negative feedback regarding the program.

Are you looking for ways to drive that grassroots effort to collect feedback from patients, healthcare peers and other providers in your area? Check out the latest Observation Deck column from Michael Reinemer, AAHomecare’s vice president of communications and policy. He offers some terrific tips you can immediately apply to your lobbying and grassroots organizing efforts.

State of the States

And as we’re now into 2011 it’s become glaringly evident that the industry faces even more challenges at the state level. As it stands at least 46 states in the Union face budget shortfalls for this year, and I seriously doubt that any governor wants to go down as the first state executive in history to lead his or her state into default — especially when the Fed has made clear that it will not bail out any states (apparently only banks are too big to fail).

So, this means cuts, and as you can well expect, Medicaid programs are already lining up at the chopping block. Many states went cut crazy last fall, but those same states are already proposing more cuts. Take my state of California, for example. After amassing a considerable state budget deficit, incoming Governor Jerry Brown has listed a slew of budget cuts, including $1.7 billion to be axed from Medi-Cal and a cap on payouts for DME, and related items, such as incontinence supplies and wound care. That’s staggering.

Whether or not the California State legislature approves these cuts remains to be seen (it nixed similar cuts and caps last year, fortunately), but it remains yet another legislative challenge that providers in the Golden State must tackle. And that very battle will be replicated in each one of the states that consider similar budget solutions.

So now is definitely not the time to throttle back on your regulatory efforts. Instead, give them as much gas as you can.

This article originally appeared in the February 2011 issue of HME Business.