We need more time for acceritation
I own a small retail medical supply store in Seminole, FL. Medicare/CMS has mandated that we as providers have to become accredited by September 30, 2009. This is an incredibly expensive process for a small business like mine. With policy and procedure manuals, consulting, and the fee for accreditation this will cost us about $10,000, not including all the time I have involved. That is about 20% of what we will bill Medicare for this year. We are currently being told by our accreditation company that it may be 6 months before they can inspect us, do to backlog. Now on top of this, Medicare has also mandated that we as providers get a $50,000 Surety Bond, which will cost us about $500. Now both of these are to protect against fraud, so I guess it needs to be done, but in this current economic climate we are finding it difficult to pay for these and are faced with losing our billing privileges. We need Medicare to give us more time for accreditation! Our Medicare billing represents about 30% or our annual sales and with out that 30% we will be forced to close.
Please Help! We need more time for accreditation!
