200 Miami HMEs Lose Provider Numbers

Miami

Some 200 HME providers in the Miami area have received letters from the National Supplier Clearinghouse suspending their government supplier numbers.

“As of right now, the numbers are revoked and [CMS is] not doing claims,” said Neil Caesar of Greenville, S.C.-based Health Law Center. “They also have put every claim [for those numbers] that was in the pipeline on 100 percent audit.”

Those actions have not only crippled many providers’ businesses, they have put beneficiaries at risk, said Javier Talamo of Kravitz & Talamo, Hialeah, Fla. “The providers are going broke as bureaucracy grinds to a halt. If you suspend 200 providers, you risk thousands of patients having no providers.”

Talamo and Caesar said the letters, dated Dec. 18 and Dec. 20, were sent out over the holiday season.

“In the letters, [the NSC] says they visited the suppliers multiple times and the providers were not at their locations. Therefore, they are in violation of all 21 standards,” said Talamo, who has about 30 clients who have gotten such letters.

Neither of the letters says when the visits were made, Talamo said. He added that providers did not find any notices posted on their doors indicating a visit.

Another problem is the erroneous charge against the providers, the attorneys said. Both letters cite a single statute that providers are said to have violated, but it refers to mammography services and is not applicable to the HME industry, according to Caesar and Talamo.

While the rule has been around for years that CMS is to hold a hearing within a week for a provider in jeopardy of losing its supplier number, “they claimed they were swamped because of the holidays,” Caesar said, and no hearings were set.

“They mishandled this, and in a way that seems totally indifferent to following the rules,” Caesar said.

“Just remember that these are the people that are going to be running competitive bidding,” Talamo added. “This is Miami’s problem now, but if you are in [a competitive bidding area], it will soon be your problem as well.”