Whew! My head has been full of products products products. We’re about to head into paste-up mode for the March issue, which means the HME News team has been racing toward the deadline.
Did I really say, in my last blog, that expected payment amounts for Round 2 for diabetes test strips would about $15? Boy, was I (and, apparently, pretty much everyone else) wrong. The strips came in at $10.41.
The first thought that ran through my head when I learned that the payment amounts for Round 2 were, on average, 45% below the current fee schedule, was, “Providers really shot themselves in the foot this time.”
The other day, there was yet another article in which a person with diabetes experienced a low blood sugar while driving. The driver had a "diabetic attack," said the article. Which led to commenters posting how much they hated that phrase.
A top priority for the complex rehab industry in the new year and new Congress will be the reintroduction of the legislation “Ensuring Access to Quality Complex Rehabilitation Act,” which strives to create a separate benefit category for complex rehab technology.
Another day, another Medicare fraud story, this one from Ohio. While it involves fraud affecting physicians, it is, as always, the medical supply fraud that caught my eye.
Let me start out by saying (writing?): The competitive bidding program, as it stands now, is a mess. No one in the industry disputes that (if there is, I haven’t heard from them).
