BALTIMORE--CMS' Sandra Bastinelli confirmed Wednesday that no deadline has been set for mandatory accreditation of all Medicare DME suppliers--at least not yet.
"Evidently, someone thought we had a drop-dead deadline for everyone to become accredited, and someone made up a nice date of April 2009," Bastinelli, division director for medical review and education in CMS' Program Integrity Group, said of a rumor circulating in the industry.
"Guess what," she told 360 phone listeners who dialed in to the agency's Open Door Forum. "That deadline did not come from CMS ... it did not come from a leak. It wasn't even a proposed date, that's the funny part. I can guarantee you that ... if someone was betting on it, it wasn't even close."
However, Bastinelli said, when such an accreditation date is set, CMS will get the message out. "I promise you that it will be on the Web site. We will also say it on the Open Door Forum, and we will also do a mass mailing if we can by list-serv," she said.
Bastinelli reminded callers there is one deadline that is fast approaching: all first-round DMEPOS bidders must be accredited by Oct. 31 in order to be considered for contracts. "We have gotten word from some of our accrediting organizations that some of the suppliers have refused onsite unannounced surveys," she said, adding that "accreditation is not just submitting an application and paying a fee.
"I'll give you a hint," she continued. "Three weeks before the deadline is not a good time to be refusing your onsite survey. When you are refusing an onsite survey, for all intents and purposes, you are refusing to become accredited."
With the deadline so close, Bastinelli said, "Obviously if you don't already have an application, and that would be a completed application, we have to assume that you are not ... and do not want to be a bidder."
In an update on Thursday at a meeting of the Program Advisory and Oversight Committee, Bastinelli said suppliers participating in the first round are taking an average of three months to become accredited--although she said "a few" had accomplished this in as little as three weeks--and the average accreditation fee is $2,500.
Some PAOC members urged CMS to go ahead and set an accreditation deadline for all providers, saying that is the only thing that would spark a major move toward accreditation among those outside current bidding areas. (See top story in this issue for more on the PAOC meeting.)