Background Music Puts CMS Webinar on Hold

ATLANTA — After a number of technical problems with a Dec.
28 webinar on competitive
bidding, CMS officials said they would have to reschedule the
presentation
for suppliers in the Charlotte, Miami and Orlando competitive
bidding areas.

Among the problems, presenters were unable to mute listeners’
phone lines, which left the webinar host shouting over one caller’s
music hold with other participants unable to hear. In addition, the
ID for the audio portion of the webinar was changed after the
session notice had been sent in an email, but the change was noted
only on the chat section of the accompanying presentation online.
One would-be participant said she held on the original conference
call line for 20 minutes before realizing there was a different ID
number she needed to use.

The same thing apparently happened to other callers, who
complained they hadn’t gotten in on the beginning of the webinar
and asked for it to restart, while some attendees who had been
listening for more than 20 minutes said they didn’t want to go back
to the beginning and start over.

Frustration among the participants was obvious as one caller
asked where to locate the webinar slides. “Read your email,”
another listener told him. When the first caller noted he didn’t
have his email handy, two presenters tried to read the url address
for the PowerPoint presentation, but background noise and static
prevented understanding.

After more than a half-hour, CMS’ Sabrina Teferi of the Atlanta
regional office said the call would be rescheduled.

“When will you reschedule?” asked one caller, adding, “Because
you know competitive bidding starts in a few days.”

Teferi responded that listeners could contact their local CBIC
ombudsman for questions about the bidding program, which will go
into effect Jan. 1.

“It’s a shame that three days before the implementation of this
drastically new program, CMS wasn’t able to figure out that a
webinar needed basic technology to ensure that listeners were not
able to make noise that interfered with the ability to convey
information,” said health care attorney Neil Caesar, who dialed
into the presentation.

“Some people have said to me jokingly, how could CMS run this
program when it can’t run a functioning teleconference …
We’ve already seen many, many instances of problems with CMS’
administration of competitive bidding and with the program itself
that go far beyond the mastery of basic teleconference technology,”
continued Caesar, president of the Health Law Center in Greenville,
S.C.

“When we have 100 examples of problems with competitive bidding,
there’s not a strong need for a webinar as problem No. 101.”

For a list of bid program ombudsmen in the nine Round 1 CBAs,
see “CBIC
Names Ombusdmen,” Dec. 17.

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