RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A Riverside, Calif.-based provider is giving referral sources and beneficiaries across the country a helping hand via a new website that allows them to find Medicare contract providers in competitive bidding areas.
Chris Rice of Diamond Respiratory Care, which accepted contracts in eight of the nine product categories in the Riverside CBA, developed www.getDME.com. The site debuted in beta form Friday.
"Since we have only six weeks left before the program goes live [on Jan. 1], I figured it was something desperately needed," Rice said.
"It's nowhere near complete — that will take about another week — but it is functional now and it returns accurate results," he added, noting that the remaining issues are appearance-related.
The site is free and user friendly. His referral sources, Rice said, just wanted to "put a Zip code in, tell if [the beneficiary] is in or out of a CBA and tell me who to call."
The new website allows users to enter a Zip code, mark the product categories they need and, if they are in a competitive bidding area, a list of providers will pop up with Medicare-contracted providers marked with a green check. For example, plug in "92518," the Zip code for Riverside, check "oxygen," and a list of contract providers comes up. If the Zip code is not in a CBA, a list will not come up.
"One of the problems we ran into last time [in the initial Round 1] is that a lot of companies said they had won when in fact they hadn't, and there was no way to verify that," Rice recalled, noting users can easily tell on the new website who is contracted and who isn't.
Rice said he was inspired to put the site together when his company began getting calls about competitive bidding from beneficiaries.
"Since Medicare began informing beneficiaries through mailings, our inbound calls have increased significantly," he said. "Many are confused that the CMS site does not reflect the bidding program information, so I figured it's time to launch this site."
Rice, who also created a public website in the first Round 1 of competitive bidding two years ago, said he initially planned getDME.com for his local market. "But it just made sense to load it with all the nine CBAs," he said.
View more competitive bidding stories.
