Archive: June 2004

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Rick Perrotta's putting his money on the line to challenge Medicare's rule governing the replacement of power wheelchairs that fall apart due to wear and tear. Rick Perrotta Medicare typically provides a beneficiary with a new power wheelchair once every five years, provided it would cost 60% of the new chair to repair the old. However, if the patient's condition changes significantly or the chair is damaged beyond repair, stolen or lost, Medicare will waive the five-year rule....

MILFORD, Conn. - Byram Health Centers, a provider of medical supplies to patients in the home, made inroads into the West Coast in May with the acquisition of Choice Medical Supplies, a market leader in the Northwest and northern California. The acquisition provides Connecticut-based Byram with its first physical presence west on Denver, Colo. Byram will center its West Coast operations from Choice Medical's former headquarters in Bellevue, Washington. The acquisition makes strategic sense, according...

WASHINGTON - Democratic lawmakers are suing to force the Bush Administration to release cost estimates it withheld from lawmakers during congressional consideration of the Medicare reform legislation last year. “HHS should have released these estimates during congressional consideration of the Medicare bill so that they could have informed the debate,” Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, stated in a press release. “The...

BALTIMORE - New National Supplier Clearinghouse guidelines dictating who can supply therapeutic footwear arose amid a cloud of questions and then abruptly disappeared, leaving nothing but lingering questions. On May 14, the NSC posted new guidelines for diabetic footwear suppliers that limited who was qualified to furnish the product. While the current rule defines suppliers as a podiatrist or other qualified individual - which has long been interpreted to include pharmacists and HMEs - the bulletin...

HME providers have been slow to embrace the paperless initiative being championed by software companies, administrative specialists and financial advisors so far, but the movement may finally gain momentum with passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug Act's new reimbursement-slashing mandates. While providers may hope that Medicare reform's intent to pattern Medicare Part B after the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan system will eliminate certificates of medical necessity and other documentation,...

PITTSBURGH - MedSage Technologies, a technology company that sells patient management systems to HME companies, is rolling out a software product that tracks a sleep apnea patient's progress and supply needs. On a regular basis, MedSage's software dials the home of an HME patient and, using the prerecorded voice of the supplier, asks questions about compliance and supply needs. The CPAP product is MedSage's second patient management system after a respiratory medication tracking system that has...

Medicare solvency has been a major topic of discussion in every major election over the past 10 years. The consensus says skyrocketing costs are the problem and that containment is the solution, but not everyone agrees who is to blame. Depending on who is doing the finger pointing, the culprits are overpaid DME/HME providers, inefficient government programs or bloated health-care insurers. In order to prevent the lack of awareness and perception that HMEs are low-value providers, we must demonstrate...

Editor, HME News In his office on Capitol Hill last month, Congressman Danny Davis, D-Ill., was persuaded by the arguments of several HME suppliers who'd asked him to support their quest to repeal the FEHBP cuts. “I can co-sponsor that,” he said, all but looking for an aide to make sure he signed on that dotted line. Then the popular congressman rubbed his chin, grinned like a mischievous kid and told the Illinois suppliers he'd recently started using some medical equipment himself. “In...

Impending reimbursement cuts from the Medicare Prescription Drug Act are prompting HME providers to go over every facet of their business with a fine-toothed comb searching for dispensable costs. And since labor is typically a company's biggest expense, it's the easiest target. But because the majority of HME companies are small operations, they already tend to run lean, and layoffs may result in a company becoming too shorthanded. So in looking at how to optimize staff, the answer lies in getting...

ORLANDO, Fla. - While critics of Medicare's existing reimbursement rule for home oxygen argue that ‘modality neutral' has hobbled access to ultra lightweight portable systems, clinicans say that is not the case, according to the largest needs assessment survey ever conducted on COPD B. Thomashow “I was somewhat surprised by that because, to be honest, that's not been my experience,” said one of the survey's analysts, Byron Thomashow, a practicing physician at Columbia University. Thomashow...