Grassroots Group Aims to Mobilize Patients

RIVERSIDE, Calif.–As the industry makes its last push to gather
support for home care legislation before Congress wraps up this
year’s session, a grassroots group is taking a new approach to get
patients involved.

Competingbid.com, an online forum for providers, released a
“patient awareness kit” in the form of a brochure on competitive
bidding last week that could reach more than 2,000 patients each
day, according to site founder Chris Rice.

“We’ve seen people try to get patients involved in the past but
the message is too complicated,” said Rice, director of marketing
for Diamond Respiratory Care, Riverside, Calif. “We thought if we
made it as simple as we possibly could and gave them some simple
steps to follow, it would be a big help.”

“Congress just cut your Medicare benefits, and I’ll bet you
didn’t even know,” states the brochure, which explains to patients
how the competitive bidding program could negatively affect their
care and urges them to contact their members of Congress.

To illustrate the point, the brochure includes a cartoon that
depicts an elderly man who is delivered a pogo stick instead of a
walker and an elderly woman who receives one oxygen tank from “Low
Bid Inc.”

The illustration was drawn by political cartoonist Mark Hill,
who has been featured in national publications such as
Time and The Chicago Tribune. Hill is currently
working on cartoons about the home oxygen rental cap and power
mobility reimbursement cuts to be used in future campaigns, Rice
said.

According to Rice, the idea is to educate those who have daily
contact with patients–drivers, technicians, customer service
representatives, etc.–on the issues and have them deliver and
explain the brochures to patients.

Most providers see an average of more than 30 patients per day,
according to a recent poll on competingbid.com, so if the site’s
more than 80 registered members participated, Rice estimates that
more than 2,000 patients could be reached daily.

“Industry-wise, we don’t have a voice in Congress because we
don’t have a strong lobby. But imagine hundreds of thousands of
people getting the message,” he said.