Former Winners Working to Stop Competitive Bidding

ATLANTA — HME providers who won contracts in the aborted
Round One of DMEPOS competitive bidding last year plan to campaign
against the newest attempt to implement the program, they told
HomeCare Monday last week.

“From Blackburn’s point of view, we are working on parallel
tracks. We are working with [the American Association for Homecare]
on how we can combat competitive bidding and defeat it, and on the
other track … what changes would have to be made to the
current methodology to make it a workable program,” said Georgie
Blackburn, who oversees government relations for the Tarentum,
Pa.-based company.

“Blackburn’s, as a provider, will definitely be rebidding. But
we are hoping to get this stopped before it gets to there,” she
added.

Chris Rice of Diamond Respiratory Care in Riverside, Calif.,
said he hopes competitive bidding will either be delayed or dropped
completely. Even though the second go-round has been implemented,
he said, “I still think there are avenues that we could take to
delay it.”

Rice, who launched a Web site, competingbid.com, to fight the
program last year, said he would likely revitalize the site. “I
haven’t done much with the site [since competitive bidding was
delayed], but we’re still averaging 40,000 to 50,000 hits a month.
It’s still a hot topic,” he said.

When Congress delayed the bidding project for 18 months,
legislators directed CMS to fix its problems. But CMS reprised
competitive bidding in an interim final rule that requires a rebid
of Round One in 2009.

“They really didn’t change much of anything,” Rice pointed
out.

That angered stakeholders and legislators alike, and both groups
responded to HHS and CMS delineating the issues with the IFR and
calling for its delay at least until the Obama administration’s new
leadership could study the rule.

In an April 15 letter, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking
member of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, threw his support
behind the request. In the letter, addressed to Health and Human
Services Acting Director Charles Johnson, Grassley said he was
concerned “that the agency plans to move ahead without engaging in
a thoughtful and deliberative process to resolve ongoing concerns
about the implementation of the competitive bidding program.”

In all, more than 100 legislators from both parties and houses
of Congress asked for the program’s delay. But CMS refused, and the
bidding rule went into effect April 18.

The American Association for Homecare has formed a task force to
discuss options for getting adjustments to the program or coming up
with an alternative. The association also has hired a Washington
health care consulting firm to figure out what the cost of
eliminating the bidding program would be. (See IFR Clears Way for
Round One Do-Over, April 20.)

“As it is right now, it is unacceptable,” Blackburn said about
the IFR. “We as an industry have to do something about it. Our
personal goal at Blackburn’s is to stop competitive bidding.”