California’s Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) announced this week that it has decided to put its version of competitive bidding on hold.

“The Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) wishes to thank all who participated in our stakeholder meetings held on May 26, 2009,” read a statement on the DHCS site. “At this time, DHCS has decided to not move forward with this assessment and demonstration project and Request for Proposal (RFP).”

DHCS began exploring a program that would see California HME providers provide DME for Medi-Cal beneficiaries via an RFP program similar to CMS’s DMEPOS competitive bidding program for Medicare.

In late May, DHCS’s Medi-Cal Benefits Waiver Analysis and Rates Division held meetings for various groups of stakeholders: manufacturers, providers, beneficiaries and representative organizations to collect feedback and input on its nascent DME RFP pilot project. It also solicited further feedback via email up until June 30.

Nearly two months later, DHCS announced on Tuesday that it was not purusing the program with the simple message “current procurement state: cancelled” at the top of its Web page. “We are currently looking at other options to save costs for the Medi-Cal program,” the site read.