2007 Forecast Survey

In a frustrating exchange during a CMS Home Health, Hospice and DME Open Door Forum in November, provider Mike Marnhout, president and CEO of Lexington, Ky.-based Bluegrass Oxygen, phoned in to ask whether the agency could designate the 10 metropolitan statistical areas in which competitive bidding will begin next year.

An agency official responded that while CMS hopes to name the cities it has selected “as soon as possible,” he also said the locations could not be released before the final rule on competitive bidding is issued — and at press time, that hadn't happened.

“This is just ludicrous,” Marnhout said after the call. “You can't budget for what you need to do for next year, you can't do anything about your game plan. You don't even know what product lines are going to be included.”

Marnhout's company has a location in Cincinnati, one of the cities on CMS' hot list for where the bidding program could roll out. “It's going to be dog-eat-dog in those 10 MSAs,” he continued. “As a businessperson, what are you supposed to do?”

Indeed. Marnhout's comments reflect those of numerous home medical equipment providers who participated in HomeCare's Forecast Survey for 2007. While most said they plan to stay in the business, their exact business plans for next year, lacking essential information about the government's DMEPOS competitive bidding program, aren't quite as firm.

About the future, they said in essence, we might as well ask the Magic 8 Ball.

“Reply hazy, try again”

You remember the Magic 8 Ball, that fortune-telling toy we all had as kids (it's still made by Mattel). Ask any question, and it had the answer: “Yes,” “No,” “Without a doubt.” Based on their comments, owners and managers from the 405 home care companies that took part in our survey might judge those responses useful compared to the official information they say they've received about competitive bidding.

Some providers in rural areas and those in New York, Chicago and L.A. — excluded from the bidding program until 2009 — reported they aren't thinking just yet about how it will affect them until they gauge how the first round goes next year. But just under half of the companies responding to the survey (49 percent) told us they currently operate in at least one or more of the 22 cities that have been targeted as possible bidding areas in 2007 — and they're worried.