CBIC Requests More Round 1 Bid Info in Short Order

BALTIMORE — The Competitive Bidding Implementation
Contractor appeared to step up requests last week for more
information from home medical equipment providers who submitted
bids for Round 1 of the DMEPOS competitive bidding project.

Waterloo, Iowa-based VGM Group and the Texas Alliance for Home
Care Services, as well as individual providers, reported that the
CBIC, via email and hard-copy letters to bidders, was asking for
more data on issues ranging from mail-order diabetic supplies,
oxygen transfilling and hospital beds to state licenses.

“They are continuing to seek out information,” said Alan Morris,
regulatory analyst for VGM. “They are going category by category.
We may see more to come in the next few weeks, and then they should
be done with the process and ready to move forward to calculate the
composite and pivotal bids.”

CMS is expected to announce pricing for Round 1 in June,
followed by bid winners in September.

Barry Johnson, CRT, president of Texas Medical in Duncanville,
Texas, and president of TAHCS, said he had fielded numerous phone
calls from the association’s members asking about the CBIC
requests. On Tuesday, he, too, received an email from the CBIC
asking for proof of licensure to provide hospital beds in
Dallas.

There were two problems with the request, Johnson said: Texas
does not require licensure to sell hospital beds, but it does call
for a germicidal bedding license — which Johnson provided
when he submitted his bid last year.

“The bid process has been closed for months and here they are
coming back and asking for more information,” he said. “They set
the deadline for the bids to be in, and they even had a covered
document review date to let you know if there was anything missing.
They told us our bids were complete, and now they have decided out
of the blue to ask for additional information.”

The requests to his company and others sent Johnson to the phone
to talk to a CBIC representative. He talked with two, but said
neither could answer his questions satisfactorily or assure him
that the license he did submit would satisfy the CBIC request.

The requested information was due by the stroke of midnight ET
on Thursday, April 29, or it could signal the death knell to
participation in the Round 1 bid, Johnson said. “Two days is not
sufficient for anyone who has a question,” he said about the
deadline to submit the documentation.

He added that four of six hospital bed providers who are members
of TAHCS had been asked by the CBIC for further data. “Why didn’t
everyone get one of these [requests]?” he asked the CBIC
representative. Her answer: They should have. She could not explain
why they didn’t, Johnson said.

Meanwhile, the CBIC also requested extra information from
providers bidding on any product category except oxygen in
Pittsburgh, Pa., who are not located in that competitive bidding
area and do not have representatives that cover that area. Such
providers, the CBIC said, must “submit a statement signed by your
company’s authorized official certifying that you do not have any
sales representatives that go into Pennsylvania to promote, sell or
provide samples of equipment.”

Bidders on oxygen in Pittsburgh who are not located in that CBA
and who also do not have sales representatives promoting or selling
there were also asked to submit a statement that “you do not
transfill oxygen and do not have any sales representatives that go
into Pennsylvania to promote, sell or provide samples of
equipment.”

VGM’s Morris said from “everything I have seen to date —
and some providers may argue this is over the top — but it is
within their authority,” he said of the CBIC’s requests, adding
that providers just needed “to respond to their requests fast and
assume that as long as they do and they have the proper
documentation to back it up, there is really no issue.”

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