Anonymous

Competitive Bidding The competitive bidding process will not only cause a great of amount of confusion to the patients and their families, but many small HMEs will go out of business because of the cost just to participate in the bidding process. If the purpose of the bidding process is to see how much cost can be cut, then take the lowest bids from the first round, implement them nation wide and allow those who think they can provide the product for that fee participate at the lower reimbursement. Many times the patients serviced are elderly and possibly overwhelmed with a recent discharge from a hospital, home health, physical therapy and medical equipment needs. This alone is a lot for them to keep track of. When you add to this that the bed may be coming from one provider, the wheelchair from another, the wound care from another, the low air loss mattress from another, and the bedside commode another. Even a young person would have trouble with all of this. On top of this if the patient needs to move to a family member’s home and then to a facility. What will happen, if the providers are not notified? It is very common for the provider to never see that equipment again.