Category Posts

Survey: Additional Pandemic/Supply Chain Expenses to an HME Supplier

Please take a few minutes to complete this 11-question survey. This is a follow-up to VGM’s 2021 Home Medical Equipment Delivery Cost Report (click here to view the 2021 Delivery Cost Survey responses). The 2021 survey included nearly 100 independent Home Medical Equipment (HME) providers that demonstrated the real cost of providing oxygen, hospital beds, mobility equipment, and more to patients’...

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On Friday, January 14th, 2022, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra announced an extension of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE). This extension will last another 90 days from January 16, 2022. Any PHE declaration can only last for 90 days at a time but can be extended or renewed. It has already been renewed multiple times.

There are several provisions tied to the duration of the PHE that will remain in place due to the extension of the PHE, including:

Medicare’s...

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Listen below as Ronda Buhrmester breaks down the new prior auth list, requirements, and the phases to implementation. 

Click here for the update master list of items subject to face-to-face and WOPD and/or prior auths.

And register for Ronda’s upcoming Live Chat, Wednesday, January 20th at 11am central as she covers PHE waivers, and disects the new master list. Register for her Live Chat! Seats are limited!

 

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 (*) UPDATED January 10, 2022 – Awaiting Supreme Court Ruling

With over 100,000 Americans hospitalized for COVID-19 as a result of the highly contagious Omicron variant, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments Friday in two sets of challenges to the Biden administration’s authority to take action to combat the pandemic. In the first case, National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, the justices will consider the Biden administration’s...

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While it is true that our industry, and all industries for that matter, face challenges on several fronts, we should take stock in the amazing service, support, and products that our community was able to provide to those in need! Your focus on the patient was never more needed, and each of you rose to the challenge. As you battle through supply shortages, uncertain healthcare policies, public health emergencies, and crazy weather in multiple regions across the county, you continue to...

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Thank you to those who took the time to fill out the PPE expenditures survey. Mark Higley was able to quantify these results into an approximate number of dollars spent on PPE within the DME industry. PPE expenditures hover between $12,000 and $15,000 per DME location.

Click here to view Mark Higley’s analysis. These results have been sent to congressional offices.

Keep your member of Congress updated on these findings too! You can easily reach out to them asking to make...

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Compiled by Mark J. Higley, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs

As we begin 2022 and look back on 2021, we recognize the challenges over the past two years by the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on the DMEPOS industry. Coupled with supply chain issues, product recalls and surcharges, demanding demographic changes, and the uncertainty attributable to the reimbursement direction from the industry’s biggest payor (Medicare), it is perhaps somewhat remarkable that our businesses...

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Watch this latest vlog from Ronda Buhrmester, Sr. Director of Payer Relations, as she walks through how to find the CMS DMEPOS fee schedules and more!

If you are a provider who was required to submit a report to HRSA, and you missed the deadline to submit reports, or would like to make a correction to the report you initially submitted, you now have a second, and likely final, chance to do that. However, that second chance won’t last long. The reporting portal has been re-opened by HRSA, but it will only remain open until December 20th. The statement on their website (https://prfreporting.hrsa.gov/s/) reads:

Yesterday, the Senate passed S.610 - Protecting Medicare and American Farmers from Sequester Cuts Act, delaying implementation of an additional 4% reduction in reimbursement for Medicare providers and suppliers as well as the 2% reduction in Medicare sequestration cuts. Congress had deferred the cuts during the COVID-19 public health emergency, but the deferral is scheduled to expire at the end of this...

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