These graphs speak for themselves
By Liz Beaulieu, Editor
Updated Tue June 14, 2016
I was putting the finishing touches on our Databank page for the July issue this morning, and the updates to the Medicare Market Marker hit me like a ton of bricks.
The marker, in case you don't know, is where we keep track of the number of allowed beneficiaries for five popular DMEPOS products: E1390 (oxygen concentrator), E0260 (semi-electric hospital bed), E0601 (CPAP), K0001 (standard wheelchair) and K0823 (power wheelchair).
We track the data using line graphs, giving you one month of new data each month, but keeping a year-long view.
For the July issue, the month of data we added was January 2016, when CMS rolled out competitive bidding to non-bid areas and implemented the first of two reimbursement cuts that each amount to about 25%.
I blogged not too long ago about the impact of the bid program on access to HME. In that blog, I used data from our HME Databank, but I was a bit limited because the most recent year for which we have data is 2014 (2015 is coming Oct. 1).
Our Medicare Market Marker is narrower (only five codes, only number of allowed beneficiaries), but more up to date.
Here's a sneak peek at the updated graphs, which speak for themselves:
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