Industry Leaders: Battle Has Only Begun

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.--As emergency officials met in Ft. Lauderdale last week to make sure Florida is prepared for the 2006 hurricane season, HME executives gathered on the other side of the state to fight the industry's own perfect storm.

At the American Association for Homecare's Leadership Conference, which concluded on Tuesday, home care leaders convened to assess the pressure on entitlement spending, preparation for competitive bidding, drastic changes in Medicare's oxygen benefit--and how to stem the tide of further government blows by educating legislators on Capitol Hill.

"We have a lot of challenges in this industry. You name it, we've been hit by it," said AAHomecare Chair Tom Ryan.

While the Deficit Reduction Act's oxygen capped-rental provision was the subject of much discussion at the three-day conference (see "DRA Confronted with New Challenges" above), meeting attendees put competitive bidding and all that will come with it at the top of their worry lists.

"We're standing on the expressway and we've got to look at the closest truck that's going to hit us," said Tim Pontius, president of Young Medical, Maumee, Ohio. "That's obviously competitive bidding and the whole issue of the supplier standards ... When competitive bidding begins, you're going to have to play the game by different rules."

For most home care companies, Pontius continued, that means making sure they can meet the government's rigorous supplier quality standards--which CMS has said it would finalize this spring--in order to participate in the bidding program.

"I think there are still a lot of people out there who are saying, 'Well, I'm not in a top 10 [metropolitan statistical area] or even in a top 25 MSA.' But what you need to understand is that's only buying you a little more time ... You've got to get your business in a position to meet those standards so you can bid. If you don't, the truck is going to hit you from the back side and you won't even see it coming."

Even with competitive bidding in place, however, keynote speaker Robert Laszewski of Washington, D.C.-based Health Policy and Strategy Associates warned the government's hand may get heavier still as the consequence of an overarching problem: Medicare and Medicaid are simply unsustainable in their present form.