Keeping a Focus on Access

With any product category, coding, coverage and payment are the vital factors that control access.

The home mobility and rehabilitation industry has not had a chance to adjust to the myriad changes impacting power mobility and, yet, more changes are being proposed that threaten any chance for stabilizing the market. So, it is important to focus on what else needs to be done to ensure access to this technology that is so critical to individuals with mobility deficits.

For the National Coalition for Assistive and Rehab Technology (NCART), a coalition of providers and manufacturers of assistive and rehab technologies, the focus has been on three initiatives:

1. Ensuring passage of the Medicare Access to Complex Rehabilitation and Assistive Technology Act of 2007 (H.R. 2231);
2. Ensuring that a first-month purchase option for power wheelchairs remains an option; and
3. Collecting viable, credible data that supports our arguments regarding the need for adequate reimbursement.

Efforts to ensure the rehab exemption from competitive bidding have been recharged with the announcement by CMS that complex rehab products will be included in round two. NCART’s next goal is to see a companion Senate bill introduced and gain support of cosponsors for H.R. 2231.

Fortunately, the Continuing Education and Legislative Advocacy Conference (CELA) was held April 23-25 in Washington. This event was sponsored by the National Registry of Rehabilitation Technology Suppliers (NRRTS) in association with NCART and the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology.

CELA was the first event of its type and brought hundreds of individuals to Washington for two important causes: to obtain required continuing education and to help educate members of Congress about complex rehab and request their support for H.R. 2231 and related issues.

President Bush’s proposed 2009 budget raises additional concerns for NCART.

The budget calls for a 13-month rental for power mobility products. Regardless of the viability of the president’s budget, it is troubling to see this proposal continuing to be considered after tremendous efforts to educate policymakers about the impact of such a change. However, it is clear that additional focus will need to be expended on this issue.

This issue and many others that ultimately impact reimbursement are what led NCART’s board of directors to authorize a two-year study, conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and the University of Buffalo, to look at the services, costs and outcomes associated with providing complex rehab technology.

The results that will be reported out of this study will offer reliable and credible data to support our claims when fighting reimbursement-related issues.

In addition to the need for data to support efforts at the federal level, the information from this study has implications for Medicaid as well. Moreover, since the OIG is working on additional studies in 2008 focused on power mobility, NCART recognizes the need to have credible data on the same subject.

While these initiatives are the focus of NCART’s current efforts around complex rehab and specifically power mobility, new issues always arise that require everyone to expand their work, all aimed at bringing stability to the industry and ensuring appropriate access to technology.

For more information, visit www.ncartcoalition.org. For more on NCART’s concerns with the inclusion of complex rehab in competitive bidding, see “Round One Shocker” on page 6.

Rita S. Hostak is president of the National Coalition for Assistive and Rehab Technology and vice president of government relations for Sunrise Medical, Longmont, Colo. She can be contacted at [email protected].