Casey Hite
A new study by Aeroflow Health raises serious concerns about how well Medicaid patients understand upcoming eligibility changes — and how widespread that confusion is.
Aeroflow Health, a durable medical equipment (DME) supplier based in Asheville, North Carolina, released “The Path to Prepared: How Health Plans Can Prepare Members, Reduce Confusion and Protect Continuity of Care” on Oct. 20. The company’s brands include Aeroflow Breastpumps, Aeroflow Diabetes, Aeroflow Sleep, and Aeroflow Urology.
For the study, Aeroflow Health surveyed 1,225 Medicaid members in August 2026 to gauge their awareness of and readiness for upcoming changes to Medicaid work requirements, the company said in its Oct. 20 news announcement. Aeroflow serves millions of patients annually.
Aeroflow Health CEO Casey Hite told HME Business that the company conducted the survey to determine Medicaid patient readiness for the changes and to equip stakeholders with critically important information.
“This new work requirement legislation goes into effect at the first part of next year,” Hite said. “We have a vested interest in making sure our patients are taken care of and that everybody continues getting the supplies and services they need.
“But our real intent here is to help share this information with our payer partners so they’re in the loop — and to hopefully help inform them on better ways to connect with people, inform the right people that these requirements are going to apply to, and that they do it in an effective way.”
Eligible patients could still lose coverage
“The findings point to a critical gap between awareness and readiness,” Aeroflow Health said in its announcement. “Affected members will need clear, state-specific guidance on what information is required and how and when to submit it. Some states may choose to implement the requirements sooner.”
The study discovered that 63% of survey respondents knew about upcoming work requirements.
“However, 44% said they were not prepared to submit the required documentation,” the announcement said. “The findings suggest that limited communication may create confusion about whether the requirements apply and what steps members need to take to maintain coverage. Nearly half of respondents (46%) reported receiving no reminders about the work requirements; 42% said they had only received between one and three reminders.”
Hite pointed out that DME suppliers know how to efficiently communicate with customers because of their frequent interactions.
“Companies within this industry tend to have better and more up-to-date contact information for patients than the payers do,” Hite said. “Oftentimes the information that payers have is stale.”
In contrast, Aeroflow knows how to contact patients and which outreach methods work best. “What we’ve found through our years of working with patients is that most people prefer contact via e-mail or text,” Hite said. “I can tell you we don’t do a lot of outreach via mail.”
The survey’s numbers
Hite also pointed out that knowing about upcoming Medicaid eligibility changes and documentation requirements is very different from knowing how to comply with the new policies.
“Number one, from the survey we’re seeing 63% of folks are aware these are coming, but so many of them have not received any reminders,” he said. “And there’s an enormous amount of anxiety about whether these work requirements apply to them. If [the work requirements] do apply to them, what is the process, what is required, and how they go through it? I think the requirements are reasonably clear, but the process to prove those things is not so clear.”
The survey additionally found that 53% of respondents delayed or made changes to their healthcare because of coverage concerns, while 89% said Medicaid coverage loss would affect their access to healthcare or medical supplies.
“Federal Medicaid community engagement requirements must be implemented by 43 states and the District of Columbia no later than January 1, 2027,” the report said. “At the same time, most adults in the Medicaid expansion group will move to six-month eligibility renewals.
“For health plans, the core operational challenge is preventing avoidable coverage loss caused by confusion, missed reporting, and overlapping administrative processes. The response should pair precise, state-specific guidance with repeated multichannel outreach and trusted partner touchpoints.”
Hite said documentation requirements can be a heavy lift for Medicaid patients and caregivers already facing enormous daily challenges.
“These are folks that are disabled, and some of them have cognitive issues, so that makes it even more difficult,” he said. “I think completing forms can also be done in a better way, in a more web-friendly interface to help guide people through a form. I don’t know whether or not payers offer that, but that’s something we would do as an organization to try to walk people through it and simplify it.”
The impact on healthcare
While these new policies are meant to protect Medicaid — the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has said the changes “aim at ensuring lawful enrollment and reducing financing loopholes” — Hite noted that if eligible patients lose access to Medicaid, it’s logical to expect ripple effects throughout the healthcare continuum.
“In the HME industry at large, the products and services that are being provided to these folks are for critical medical needs,” he said. “In the absence of those, yes — there will absolutely be hospital admissions. I think that’s a safe assumption. If that’s caused by a lapse in [Medicaid] coverage, the hospital ends up carrying that cost.”
Hite said Aeroflow is anticipating that some patients will experience partial lapses in Medicaid coverage.
“Our nation has a problem with healthcare costs, and it needs to be addressed from all sides,” he said. “It just needs to be done in a very pragmatic, common-sense approach.”
And Aeroflow Health hopes its new report efficiently moves all stakeholders in that direction.
“The purpose of this is to create awareness across the entire healthcare spectrum about the issues that folks need to anticipate,” Hite said. “I think the main point is making sure that Medicaid plans identify the right people before they apply these requirements — number one, that they use all data sources that they have available to identify the right people.
“And then that they use all methods of communication to reach these folks, and they make the process as simple to follow as possible so this population doesn’t lose coverage. I think everybody in the industry has the patient’s best interests at heart, and the people that need these [DME products] need to continue getting them.”
