Now that the new year has begun, the American Association for Homecare has outlined key legislative agenda items it plans to pursue as the House of Representatives returns to Capitol this week, and the Senate joins them next week.
Chief among the industry’s goals are the continued efforts to drive co-sponsors for legislation to protect rural providers from the expansion of competitive bidding. Efforts to get legislative language from H.R. 4185, the Protecting Access through Competitive-pricing Transition (PACT) Act, and S.2312, the DME Access and Stabilization Act, attached to December’s Omnibus spending bill failed, which meant the Jan. 1 implementation expansion of competitive bidding did impact rural providers.
However, the industry is working to advance the bills regardless, so that the application of bid rates of those providers’ DME claims can be stopped. At present H.R. 4185 has 76 co-sponsors ad S.2312 has 18 co-sponsors.
Additionally, the association is continuing to fight to protect complex rehab accessories from reimbursement cuts, due to the Jan. 1 bid expansion. As HMEB readers might recall, Congress did pass a one-year delay in the application of competitive bid pricing to power complex rehab wheelchair accessories, but the delay is only for a year, and it only protects power CRT accessories; not accessories for manual chairs.
So, AAHomecare says it will continue to advance H.R. 3229 and S. 2196, which aim to protect CRT accessories for manual and power chairs from the bid expansion. This means providers need to help encourage lawmakers to back the bills. Currently, H.R. 3229 has 85 co-sponsors and S. 2196 has 16 backers.
Also, the association said it expected legislation to be introduced in the session that would address the proposed 35 percent cut to ventilator services (E0464 and E0463). On Dec. 18, 22 members of congress sent a letter to CMS Acting Administrator Andrew Slavitt urging CMS to delay the reimbursement cut for one year and to work toward a more standardized method for determining medical necessity of ventilators across all four DME MAC.
“AAHomecare staff and other industry stakeholders have started meeting with our champions on Capitol Hill to strategize on moving these initiatives forward in 2016,” a message from the association stated.
The association outlined the various dates Congress would be in recess in the first half of the year, which give HME providers solid opportunities to meet with their lawmaker while they are in their home districts:
- Jan.14-22 (House)
- Feb. 15-19 (House & Senate)
- Mar. 4-11 (House)
- Mar. 21-23 (Senate)
- Mar. 24-Apr. 1 (House & Senate)
- Apr. 4-11 (House)
- May 2-6 (House & Senate)
- May 30-June 3 (House & Senate)
- June 27-July 1 (House)
- July 1-6 (Senate)