Scooter Store Exits Houston Medicare Market

Houston

After letting go 400 employees in the past year, The Scooter Store announced last month it is moving out of Houston’s Medicare power wheelchair market because of what it calls “drastically more restrictive interpretations of coverage guidance than anywhere else in the country,” according to a company statement.

“We deeply regret having to take this action,” said President Mike Pfister, “but we are left with no choice.”

The company said it will no longer provide wheelchairs and scooters to Houston-area Medicare beneficiaries on an assigned basis. It is also closing its local distribution center and will transfer those functions to a retail location elsewhere in the city. The company added it will continue power wheelchair sales in Houston to those who pay with cash, credit or private insurance.

Since Jan. 1, the New Braunfels, Texas-based company said it has been reimbursed for only eight of the more than 500 wheelchairs it delivered to Harris County (Houston), Texas, the epicenter of the government’s Operation Wheeler Dealer crackdown on power wheelchair fraud and abuse.

“We applaud and support CMS’ efforts to combat fraud,” Pfister said. “But the current crisis is not about fraud. The real injustice today is the geographical discrimination against hundreds of qualifying beneficiaries who are being penalized only because they live near Houston.”

Denied and unpaid claims for power wheelchairs in the Houston area over the last year have cost the company more than $2.5 million, the mobility provider said. Elsewhere in the country, the company added, 95 percent of its power chair claims have been approved.