Wyden: Add ‘Any Willing Provider’

WASHINGTON—As legislation aimed at health care reform
continues its speedy path through the House—the Ways and
Means, Education and Labor and Energy and Commerce committees are
expected to vote on their $1 trillion plan today—the DMEPOS competitive bidding
program is also moving ahead.
 
Weekly messages from CMS and its DME MACs remind providers to get
accredited, get a surety bond and get NSC files in order to prepare
for the program’s Round 1 rebid.
 
But officials at Care Medical and Rehabilitation Equipment,
Portland, Ore., are hoping that won’t happen. After their
work with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on the issue, Wyden is
circulating a sign-on letter to Senate colleagues addressing his
concerns about the bidding program. The letter will be sent to HHS
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
 
“We write to you about protecting patient access to home
medical equipment,” the letter states. “Stakeholders
and constituents fear that the currently structured bidding program
will lead to increased government waste and further compromise
patients’ access to critical home care services. They warn of
shortages of suppliers (increasing monopolies and fraud), closing
of smaller community-based suppliers, and reducing competition,
which could ultimately lead to price increases. 
 
“A possible solution may be to add an ‘any willing
provider’ rule to allow any Medicare supplier to continue
providing services so long as they are willing to accept the newly
contracted Medicare reimbursement rates. This may better maintain
the competitive nature of the industry as it is today and help
postpone the closure of many domestic and often rural businesses
nationwide,” Wyden writes.
 
Unless Sebelius changes the CMS competitive bidding rule, according
to HME advocates, providers who don’t win contracts could be
shut out of Medicare business while their patients come up against
quality and access issues. In the Miami competitive bidding area in
the 2008 Round 1 bid, for example, only 44 oxygen contracts were
awarded although the CBA included more than 500 oxygen providers.
(For more, see “IFR Clears Way for Round
1 Do-Over.”)
 
To read the Wyden letter in full, click here.
 
Waterloo, Iowa-based VGM is asking providers to ask their senators
to add their names to Wyden’s letter. To sign on, senators
should contact Mary Polce-Lynch in Sen. Wyden’s office at
202/224-5244 or at [email protected].