BALTIMORE--CMS has announced that the next meeting of the Program Advisory and Oversight Committee will be held Oct. 11 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Hilton Pikesville Hotel in Baltimore.

While they have not yet been notified about the meeting agenda, according to some PAOC members, they are hopeful discussion could center around issues related to the first round of competitive bidding, which is set to close Sept. 25.

"We have only been notified of the date [and] haven't received any details re agenda or a public comment portion or anything, just the date and time so far," said committee member Cara Bachenheimer, senior vice president of government relations for Invacare Corp., Elyria, Ohio.

Along with its mandate for DMEPOS competitive bidding, the Medicare Modernization Act required CMS to form the committee to advise the agency on implementation of the bid program.

Industry observers, however, have argued the group is ill-named: Some committee members say they're playing a purely "advisory" role and have no "oversight" over CMS.

Others contend that while the insights provided by the PAOC's members are valuable, CMS has paid little attention in its ramp-up of the bidding program. Providers in the first 10 CBAs have complained about missing program details and product category issues. And with only days remaining before the first-round bid deadline, many say they still don't understand exactly how their bids will be evaluated or, if their bids are not selected, how they will know what went wrong.

"It's a black hole," said Bachenheimer. "You put together a bid, based on hopefully fairly informed, educated analysis of your operation, but how is CMS going to look at that data? We have no idea."

While CMS has said it will not "go into specifics about our internal processes," neither has the agency released information about the number of providers who registered to bid, in which categories or in which CBAs.

Last week, the American Association for Homecare said it will develop "a comprehensive list of issues and questions that should be addressed" at the upcoming PAOC meeting, its first since May of 2006. The committee is scheduled to meet periodically through 2009.

Read more information about previous PAOC meetings.