Tag: The Scooter Store

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas - The Justice Department will not bring criminal charges against former executives of the now defunct The Scooter Store, according to the San Antonio Express-News.“Based on the results of a five-year investigation, the Justice Department does not believe it has sufficient evidence to prove criminal liability beyond a reasonable doubt as to senior managers at The Scooter Store,” said agency spokesman Peter Carr in an email to the newspaper.The decision comes more than...

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas - The Justice Department will not bring criminal charges against former executives of the now defunct The Scooter Store, according to the San Antonio Express-News.“Based on the results of a five-year investigation, the Justice Department does not believe it has sufficient evidence to prove criminal liability beyond a reasonable doubt as to senior managers at The Scooter Store,” said agency spokesman Peter Carr in an email to the newspaper.The decision comes more than...

WASHINGTON - The brief mention of repair issues in a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on competitive bidding doesn't speak to the severity of the problem, say mobility stakeholders.“I think the GAO report brought some acknowledgement of the problems in the competitive bidding areas, but I think what we want to continue to focus on with CMS is that this is a broader problem requiring fixes not just in the competitive bidding program, but the Medicare program in general,”...

WASHINGTON - CMS's decision to pay for repairs for capped rental DME provided by The Scooter Store and transferred to beneficiaries on Oct. 24 is a step in the right direction, but not a solution, industry stakeholders say. “Before this, no provider could touch those chairs,” said Martin Szmal, founder of The Mobility Consultants. “Now providers can follow the same guidelines of any beneficiary-owned power wheelchair.” CMS stated in a bulletin last week that Medicare...

BALTIMORE - Medicare can pay for repairs to capped rental DME provided by The Scooter Store and transferred to beneficiaries on Oct. 24, 2013, according to a bulletin from CMS.Medicare can pay for the repairs performed on or after that date, so long as contractors deem the repairs reasonable, necessary and in accordance with Medicare regulations, CMS states.Industry stakeholders have been calling on CMS to address repair issues in the wake of The Scooter Store closing its doors in September.To...

BALTIMORE - The PECOS edits are scheduled to go into effect today. Noridian Administrative Services, the DME MAC for Jurisdiction D, reminded providers in a Jan. 2 bulletin that Medicare planned to implement Phase 2 denial edits on Jan. 6. With the edits in effect, contractors will verify that the ordering/referring physician or healthcare provider on the claim is in the Physician Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System (PECOS), and is eligible to order/refer in Medicare. Ordering/referring physicians...

SAN ANTONIO - The former chairman and CEO of The Scooter Store has denied any wrongdoing in an interview with The San Antonio News-Express. “I think I have an extremely high level of confidence that the company never did anything wrong,” Doug Harrison told the newspaper. “I know I never did anything wrong.” Before closing in 2013, The Scooter Store was the subject of an FBI investigation. It had also come under scrutiny by numerous members of Congress. Harrison also told the...

It's not quite the end of the year, but we're working on the January issue, so I'm already wondering what the top 10 stories are for 2013. There's still a month and some change left in the year, but with two holidays gobbling up at least five days between now and then, how much are things going to change, anyway? (She says naively. Believe me, I'm not against some huge piece of news breaking in the next month with a headline like, Congress includes market-pricing program language in “doc fix”...

WASHINGTON - The Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals (OMHA) will defer assignments for hearings—possibly up to 28 months, according to a recent notice. Requests for hearings received after July 15, 2013, will be entered into the agency's case processing system and held until there is room on an Administrative Law Judge's (ALJ) docket for adjudication. When a request is assigned, a notice will be sent, according to the notice. The ALJs have been backlogged for more than a year,...

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas - Senior U.S. District Judge Harry Lee Hudspeth has tossed a lawsuit filed by former employees of The Scooter Store seeking damages over the falling value of their stock ownership plan, the San Antonio Express-News reports. Filed last spring, the lawsuit called for restoring the value of their employee stock ownership plan, which tumbled from $36.9 million in 2008 to $8.5 million in 2009. Former employees alleged company founder Douglas Harrison, Principal Life Insurance Company...