With the winds of healthcare ever blowing, the respiratory community continues to be impacted by many changes, particularly in the home care arena. This past year, Medicare’s Competitive Bidding program commenced on July 1. This affected most areas of the country, and in New Jersey, with the exception of Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Mercer Counties, all other parts of the state were impacted. The program stipulated that Home Care companies bid on nine different product classes and submit prices for each category. To everyone’s unfortunate surprise, CMS came back with rates that cut oxygen and PAP’s reimbursement in half. However, the worst was yet to come.
Roughly 80% of home care companies were not awarded contracts and immediately caused these organizations to cease from providing Respiratory products to their patients. Needless to see, businesses scrambled to make operational decisions based largely on the fiscal impact they would experience. This has resulted in many companies closing or dramatically reducing staff, including Respiratory Therapists. Additionally, this limits patient’s choice to providers and, for those patients who have had long relationships with their provider, had those ties severed and were transitioned elsewhere. This, of course, has caught the eye of homecare lobbying groups who are aggressively trying to amend this program. Currently, a bill, the Medicare DMEPOS Market Pricing Program Act of 2013 (H.R. 1717) was introduced to the House thanks to the bipartisan efforts of Rep. Tom Price, M.D. (R-Ga.) and Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.). This bill currently has 149 co-sponsors in Congress who have joined the efforts in getting this bill to replace the devastating impacts of Competitive Bidding. We urge our fellow Respiratory Therapists to support this legislation and write their legislatures, letting them know the impact to our patients and our profession.
