Bohner: Reconsider Oxygen Cap; CMS Sends Accreditation Reminder

As the home oxygen sector works to reshape Medicare’s oxygen
benefit, last week House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio,
wrote CMS Acting Administrator Charlene Frizzera to ask that the
agency reconsider the payment policy and provide oxygen payments
throughout the beneficiary’s period of medical need. Bohner
said he was concerned that the lack of payments for maintenance and
services post-36 months would jeopardize the quality of care that
patients have come to expect from their provider. “Not only
does this policy potentially harm the current care that many
Medicare beneficiaries are receiving,” Boehner wrote in the March
18 letter, “but oxygen providers may be forced to make difficult
decisions and reduce services that these beneficiaries and their
physicians traditionally rely upon.”