• Medical Equipment and Supplies

Be aware that Medicare changes may require some durable medical equipment vendors to change the items they can supply to you over the next few months. Medicare, in what the government initiated as a well-intentioned, cost-saving move (but which, in typical governmental fashion, has created a logistical nightmare), required medical equipment suppliers to bid on the items they wished to continue to sell to patients. Medicare analyzed the bids, chose certain companies to supply specific items and is now in the process of notifying medical equipment companies which company will be authorized to sell which items to Medicare patients in the region. Consequently, each medical equipment company will be authorized to sell fewer types of items than before to Medicare patients (for Medicare reimbursement), so it may require that you use more than one medical equipment vendor to supply all the needs for one patient. Medical equipment companies may continue to sell their full line of items to patients who are not expecting Medicare reimbursement for those items. When these new rules go into effect this summer, medical equipment companies will tell you whether or not they can supply a requested item under the Medicare reimbursement rules. If the company you are working with cannot supply a needed item, they can help you work with another company to obtain that specific item or can refer you to another company. As we receive more clarity on this new process, we will ask vendors listed under the medical equipment section of our site to indicate which items they are approved to sell under the new Medicare rules.