Baltimore

The Health Care Financing Administration has released its durable medical equipment fee schedule - but without the full Consumer Price Index update as recently passed by Congress in the Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000.

According to the fee schedule, amounts paid for DME for the first six months of 2001 are 0.3 percent, the same as before passage of the legislation. For the last six months of 2001, the updated amounts will be paid plus a transitional allowance of 3.28 percent. In doing this, a full-year CPI update will be compressed into six months. The fee schedule can be found online at www.hcfa.gov/stats/dme01_a.zip.

In other news, HCFA also published a final rule in the Dec. 29 Federal Register that provides for expanded coverage for beneficiaries with diabetes to receive training from qualified providers in self-managing the disease. Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes will initially receive one hour of individual training or assessment and nine hours of group training. The regulation also allows two hours of annual follow-up training that can be given on an individual basis.