CMS officials continued to push back following the delay of competitive bidding, with the latest salvo coming this week in the American Medical News (AMN). “This was a missed opportunity,” said Laurence D. Wilson (pictured here at the AAHomecare Legislative Conference, March 2008), in the “newspaper for America’s physicians.”

Unlike past media coverage, which has largely ignored the industry perspective, AMN did contact an industry voice in the form of Tyler Wilson, president of AAHomecare. “Were it not stopped in its tracks, we would have seen some real problems with respect to beneficiaries getting the access to care that they traditionally have had,” said Wilson in the article by reporter David Glendinning.

Additional comments from Seth Gottlieb, MD, a pulmonary disease specialist in Miami Beach, Fla, added weight to Wilson’s comments in the form of concrete examples. Glendinning reports that doctors working to move patients out of the hospital found that the newly reduced list of approved equipment suppliers led to administrative delays and quality concerns. In the example supplied by Gottlieb, none of the licensed oxygen suppliers in the immediate had won bids to Medicare patients. This meant (in the 2 weeks before the delay) that he had to rely on separate, unknown, and remote suppliers. “This will increase the work for my staff and the hospital discharge planner and will result in a delay in the patient's discharge,” said Gottlieb in the article, “which will ultimately cost Medicare more in the long run.”

In paraphrased excerpts, Glendinning indicates Wilson and DME suppliers will try to use the next 18 months to convince Congress that competitive bidding is not necessary to cut costs. Furthermore, Wilson says that CMS “must tackle its DME fraud problem by moving forward with plans to accredit legitimate suppliers and exclude firms that cannot make the grade.”