Looking for a Contract Provider? Get to getDME.com

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A Riverside, Calif.-based provider is
giving referral sources and beneficiaries across the country a
helping hand via a new website that allows them to find Medicare
contract providers in competitive bidding areas.

Chris Rice of Diamond Respiratory Care, which accepted contracts
in eight of the nine product categories in the Riverside CBA,
developed www.getDME.com. The site debuted in beta form
Friday.

“Since we have only six weeks left before the program goes live
[on Jan. 1], I figured it was something desperately needed,” Rice
said.

“It’s nowhere near complete — that will take about another
week — but it is functional now and it returns accurate
results,” he added, noting that the remaining issues are
appearance-related.

The site is free and user friendly. His referral sources, Rice
said, just wanted to “put a Zip code in, tell if [the beneficiary]
is in or out of a CBA and tell me who to call.”

The new website allows users to enter a Zip code, mark the
product categories they need and, if they are in a competitive
bidding area, a list of providers will pop up with
Medicare-contracted providers marked with a green check. For
example, plug in “92518,” the Zip code for Riverside, check
“oxygen,” and a list of contract providers comes up. If the Zip
code is not in a CBA, a list will not come up.

“One of the problems we ran into last time [in the initial Round
1] is that a lot of companies said they had won when in fact they
hadn’t, and there was no way to verify that,” Rice recalled, noting
users can easily tell on the new website who is contracted and who
isn’t.

Rice said he was inspired to put the site together when his
company began getting calls about competitive bidding from
beneficiaries.

“Since Medicare began informing beneficiaries through mailings,
our inbound calls have increased significantly,” he said. “Many are
confused that the CMS site does not reflect the bidding program
information, so I figured it’s time to launch this site.”

Rice, who also created a public website in the first Round 1 of
competitive bidding two years ago, said he initially planned
getDME.com for his local market. “But it just made sense to load it
with all the nine CBAs,” he said.

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