Home Health & Hospice Week

Industry groups step in to help.

Don't go it alone if you're a home medical equipment supplier up against the feds' online competitive bidding submission system.

The American Association for Homecare and the National Association of Independent Medical Equipment Suppliers are among the trade groups asking all HME providers to contact the association if you are having trouble submitting bids for the first round of the Medicare competitive bidding program.

"We believe that even one provider who is not able to submit a bid because of a bidding system problem is unacceptable," says AAHomecare in a recent bulletin to members. "Therefore, we ask for help in documenting these issues so that we can report them directly to CMS and continue to monitor the situation."

Deadlines: All bids are now due by 9 p.m. ET on Sept. 25. The cutoff for registration is Aug. 27; and the accreditation deadline is Oct. 31.

To submit reports of bidding problems, contact Walt Gorski at waltg@aahomecare.org or Stacey Harms at staceyh@aahomecare.org. Include a detailed description of your problems. At NAIMES, the contact is Wayne Stanfield at yourfuture@dmehelp.org.

"Specific detailed information about your problems and your contacts with the CBIC help line are critical," coaches AAHomecare.