CMS Disqualified 630 Out Of 1,005 Homecare Providers In Round One, USA

It's like turning down college applicants who forget to include their SAT scores in their applications. That's the way senior officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) described the rationale behind excluding many of the 630 bidders that were disqualified from the total of 1,005 unique companies that participated in Round One of the Medicare bidding program. The comparison and the figures were reported to the American Association for Homecare (AAHomecare) by congressional staff who attended this morning's briefing by CMS.


Round One of competitive bidding for durable medical equipment and services such as oxygen therapy, hospital beds, and power wheelchairs will affect as many as three million Medicare beneficiaries beginning on July 1 in the following 10 metropolitan statistical areas: Charlotte, N.C., Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Kansas City, Miami, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Riverside, Calif., and San Juan, P.R.



"The fact that CMS disqualified 63 percent of the 1,005 bidders in Round One suggests that this whole process got seriously off track somewhere," said Tyler J. Wilson, president of AAHomecare. "Blaming the bidders is not going to rectify the problems and restore the integrity of the competitive bidding program. Congress must act to put this whole program on hold and get to the bottom of the problems, which the industry has carefully documented."



Congressional staff in today's meeting reported that the room was packed and that the congressional staff were "skeptical" about the CMS presentation and generally sympathetic to the concerns raised by disqualified bidders in the first 10 bid areas. There was lengthy questioning by congressional staff who probed for specific answers. CMS is expected to brief Senate staff later in the week.


CMS staff also mentioned that they will soon release the ZIP Codes associated with the 70 Metropolitan Statistical Areas targeted for bidding in Round Two.



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