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 month 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.
