Competitive Bidding
I work for a locally owned DME company in Cleveland, OH. Competitive Bidding is NOT what our patients need, nor the DME suppliers. How can the government expect other DME companies to take care of patients in areas that they have no experience in? It is going to be the smaller companies and our patients who end up hurting in the end.
Anonymous said:
Jun 23, 09 at 2:49 pmI could not agree more.
Justin Puccinelli said:
Jun 23, 09 at 3:05 pmHi, I work for a local Cleveland DME company, and I have seen all of the problems that competitive bidding has caused. These aren’t just problems for us but Medicare beneficiaries suffer as well at the hands of unqualified providers… We have already lost enough jobs due to this economy, and what is it going to help if we lose thousands more dme jobs due to competetive bidding. This needs to be stopped!!!
Kristin O'Neill said:
Jun 23, 09 at 3:52 pmI work for a locally owned HME company located in Cleveland, Oh. We participated in the round 1 bid and invested over one full year of time preparing for the bid. The beneficiaries received no notification from their insurance, Medicare. All education was and is left to us the supplier, the program was not prepared to implement and the beneficiaries were extremely confused as were ourselves. The amount of time and expense to prepare was necessary but difficult to sustain in our budget.
Suppliers such as us provide a valuable, personal service to the beneficiaries along with the products. The beneficiaries will not receive service at all. The bids are at risk to be awarded to companies that are unqualified for the service required. Beneficiaries are also able to support their community by using providers that are in their neighborhood or change providers if they so desire, this takes away their choice and also takes away the opportunity for a business to thrive.
This program is not the solution; please discontinue efforts to implement this program. Another alternative must be introduced to allow the beneficiary to receive the same service they are receiving now.
We should be supporting a company who is providing jobs to residents and providing legitimate, qualified services to the beneficiary, we should not be restricting the ability to be in business.