Tag: Advocacy

WASHINGTON – NCART and NRRTS have opened registration for their 2023 Virtual CRT Congressional Fly-in scheduled for Sept. 13. “Congress plays a critical role in protecting access to CRT,” the two organizations say. “Educating them about the importance of appropriate CRT access is a message that needs to be delivered directly by CRT users, clinicians, caregivers, family members, suppliers, manufacturers and others.” There is no cost to register and participate. Once registered,...

WASHINGTON – Fresh off its latest round of Hill visits, AAHomecare is confident it will have a bill in hand to address reimbursement in time for a legislative fly-in scheduled for May, says President and CEO Tom Ryan.  The industry is again seeking to implement a 90/10 blended reimbursement rate in former competitive bidding areas and to make permanent a 75/25 blended reimbursement rate for non-bid/non-rural areas that was extended as part of a year-end spending package in December.  “What...

DALLAS – As the saying goes, it takes a village and that was nowhere more evident than at the AAHomecare Update at Medtrade, where a panel of HME leaders shared their insights on everything from advocacy to reimbursement to e-prescribing.  The Wednesday afternoon session – a new time and format – featured Bill Guidetti of Apria, Josh Marx of Medical Service Company and Ryan Bullock of Aeroflow.  “It’s important to have a strong advocate in Washington,...

Q. What is the impact of advocacy in health care?  A. As a nation with the highest health care spend per capita, there’s no shortage of discussions regarding innovation and cost reduction. As health care providers, we’re uniquely positioned to see the impact on patient lives. Our position allows us to moderate proposed solutions and our voice has the power to impact change.  Whether insurance plans have developed innovative solutions to reduce costs immediately or have...

TIFTON, Ga. – Tyler Riddle, a second-generation provider and “elder millennial,” says it’s never been a more important time to advocate for the HME industry.  "Things change and we’re constantly being challenged, (but) we’re highly adaptable,” said Riddle, president of MRS Homecare, a full-service provider with 12 locations covering mainly rural Georgia. “Coming out of COVID has been exciting – supply chain issues have started working...

WASHINGTON – Tomorrow Health is expanding support for HME advocacy by becoming an AAHomecare Diamond Corporate Partner. “Tomorrow Health brings strong technological capabilities and expertise with increasingly important value-based care models to our partnership cohort,” said Tom Ryan, president and CEO of AAHomecare. “They are signaling their commitment to strengthening our industry’s capability to deliver public policy results that recognize the importance of quality...

In the past few months:  A global pandemic has severely stressed the supply of oxygen concentrators, revealing cracks in an HME industry that has been slowly chipped away at by Medicare’s competitive bidding program for 10 years.  CMS has decided not to move forward with the majority of Round 2021 of that program, because the agency didn’t “achieve expected savings,” and therefore – wait for it – the current reduced rates continue to apply.  The...

Earlier this month, Managing Editor Theresa Flaherty and I were trying to piece together the latest developments in reimbursement relief and we were both getting pretty frustrated. AAHomecare announced recently that the industry's champions in the House of Representatives had introduced H.R. 8158, a bill that would eliminate the budget neutrality requirement for home oxygen therapy. The association says the House Energy and Commerce Committee requested that the provision be peeled away from...

WASHINGTON - AAHomecare has launched ONE VOICE, a monthly videocast to discuss the major challenges that the HME industry is facing, and the importance of strong and united advocacy efforts to securing better policy results and rates at both the state and federal levels. The videocasts are hosted by Jeff Bowman, vice president of HME at McKesson, and one of the association's board members. The first videocast features Dewey Roof, president of Life HME and Life H2H; James Russell, vice president and...

WASHINGTON - AAHomecare says it has seen a strong increase in the number of companies supporting the association at the corporate partner level.American Medical Technologies joined the association in March as a platinum corporate partner, and Apria Healthcare and McKesson have both increased their support to that level, bringing the total number of platinum corporate partners to seven.“We appreciate the investment that every one of our members is making in AAHomecare,” said Tom Ryan,...