BALTIMORE--Following a series of calls June 4-8, CMS held two additional teleconferences last week to clarify information for small providers and field questions related to the first round of competitive bidding--and there were a lot of them.

In Wednesday and Thursday sessions conducted by Palmetto GBA, CMS' Competitive Bidding Implementation Contractor, recurring themes came up in providers' queries about common ownership, financial documentation and capacity, among a wide range of subjects.

One caller raised the issue of problems with the online bidding system, a frequent complaint from providers since CMS opened its 60-day bid window May 15 (see HomeCare Monday, June 11).

"We're in the process of just getting started on putting all this online, and the system seems to continue to crash on us," the caller said. "We've spent two days on this already and none of our data's been accepted. Is there something that's going on that we're unaware of, or can you tell us when the system's up or when it's down?"

Suggesting that the caller might have entered the system when maintenance was being performed, a CBIC official said "whenever the system is going to be down for a significant period of time, we will have [an alert on the Web site]."

But the caller persisted. "Well, for example, today we've got five hours between myself and my partner into this, and when we hit the 'next' button, it just came back with an error ... All I'm trying to say is that you're talking about a lot of man-hours for you to get through the process, and it doesn't allow you to save anything along the way and so you lose all of that ... it's crashing before we even make it to the point [of being able to save]," he said.

CBIC officials told the provider to call the bidding help line.

A similar dialog resulted from a question about credit reports, which must be turned in with bids. "The report we want is called a commercial credit scoring report," the CBIC's chief accountant said. He said such reports are not available online and must be requested from a representative at the credit bureau.

But a number of companies have already bought credit reports without a commercial score because they didn't know they needed one, a caller pointed out. The matter "needs some pretty quick attention," he said.

The official explained that the CBIC didn't want to influence the use of one credit facility over another--it has approved Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and Dun & Bradstreet--but said that a clarification about the necessary commercial score would be posted to its Web site.

Responding to questions about capacity, CBIC staff members said while there was no formula they could give, providers' estimated capacity would only be used to determine whether there are enough providers to service beneficiaries across each bidding area but would not be used to rank bids.

Officials also clarified a point about network bids during the Wednesday conference, which focused on small suppliers. Repeating that it intends to award 30 percent of winning contracts to meet its small supplier target, the CBIC said network members will be considered individually, not collectively as a group.

For example, an official explained, "If there are 10 members of a network, that network will count as 10 small suppliers in the 30 percent small supplier target calculation. If we only need three small suppliers to meet our 30 percent goal, we will accept the entire network, thus achieving and exceeding our goal by awarding the contract to one network with 10 members."

The CBIC said transcripts and an audio replay of the calls would be available on its Web site at www.dmecompetitivebid.com.

For additional questions, the CBIC instructed providers to call the bidding help line at (877) 577-5331 or e-mail cbic.admin@palmettogba.com.