Tuesday, November 5, 2013
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (Nov. 5, 2013)—The North Florida Coalition of Home Medical Equipment Providers coordinated a meeting between several North Florida hospital systems along with some nursing facilities and the local offices of Senator Bill Nelson, Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Ander Crenshaw. The coalition has been active in communicating the competitive bidding issues with its Representatives; however, they felt it was time to hear from the actual case managers and nurses involved. Case managers from the hospitals and rehab facilities were blunt in addressing access issues under the flawed competitive bidding program. Case managers explained to the Senate and Congressional offices that before this program began on July 1, they could get medical equipment for their patients within hours at any time of the day or night. Now all of that has changed. Due to problems occurring in the Jacksonville competitive bidding area (CBA), case managers were not surprised to see studies showing that 80 percent of the bid winners in the Jacksonville CBA were out-of-area providers who were not servicing the Jacksonville area prior to July 1, and that approximately 75 percent of the bid winners for walkers and hospital beds were still not capable of servicing the Jacksonville area three months in to the program. One hospital stated that they contacted every bid winner in the Jacksonville CBA and found that most were not capable of servicing the area. The Senate and Congressional offices found this extremely disturbing. Jerry Hall, owner of Hall-Moore Medical Supplies, shared a copy of the response letter he received from the Deputy Director at CMS, concerning Hall’s testimony on competitive bidding to the Small Business Administration. In the letter, the Deputy Director states that CMS conducts an evaluation of supplier’s expansion plans to verify the supplier’s ability to provide items and services in the CBA on day one of the contract period. The letter also states that one important contract term is the requirement that contract suppliers must service the entire CBA. These statements by the Deputy Director obviously contradict what is actually happening with in the program. At the close of the meeting, the Senate offices were asked to introduce a companion bill to H.R. 1717 MPP. The North Florida Coalition of Home Medical Equipment Providers asked that a hearing be conducted to include the case managers, nurses and other health care professionals’ testimonies on the program and its effect on patient care. The case managers at the meeting produced stacks of e-mail complaints that be forwarded to the congressional offices, debunking CMS’s claim that there are only 33 complaints nationally.