Home Health & Hospice Week

Suppliers of prosthetics and orthotics: Gear up for training.

Get ready to beef up your quality checks if you want to retain the right to bill Medicare.

Earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services unveiled updates to the quality standards for suppliers of durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics and supplies (DMEPOS). The agency calls the changes "minor," but shrugging off the draft revisions could cost you, experts say.

Essential: Suppliers must comply with the quality standards in order to retain a supplier billing number and to receive Medicare Part B payments.

The revised version of the quality standards are considerably longer, totaling 20 pages, compared to 14 pages for the August 2006 version now in effect.

New: Among the changes is the stipulation that suppliers offer beneficiaries and their caregivers "written and oral" instructions related to the use, maintenance, and potential hazards of the equipment or other items they supply. Also new is that the instructions now must cover "infection control practices" related to the DME.

Another draft provision calls for suppliers to "verify, authenticate, and document" that products delivered are "not adulterated, counterfeit, suspected of being counterfeit, and have not been obtained by fraud or deceit." The same section calls on suppliers to police whether the equipment is misbranded and whether it has been "appropriately labeled for [its] intended distribution channels."

Beware: Suppliers of prosthetics and orthotics should review the revisions carefully, cautions Mary Ellen Conway of Capital Healthcare Group in Bethesda. MD. A number of pages added to the draft document pertain to orthotics and prosthetics, including detailed new instructions for beneficiary training and instruction.

Deadline: CMS will accept comments on the draft revisions through March 18. Only the sections highlighted in the draft document are open for comment, noted CMS' Sandra Bastinelli in the Feb. 20 Open Door Forum for home care providers. The non-highlighted parts already underwent public comment in 2006.

To review the highlighted document, go to www.cms.hhs.gov/MedicareProviderSupEnroll/03_DeemedAccreditationOrganizations.asp.