With so much attention focused on a heated presidential race over the last several months, you may have missed a serious problem facing a major component of the healthcare infrastructure that serves rural communities nationwide. But home medical equipment companies in these areas, and the millions of seniors, people with disabilities and other individuals who depend on their products, are all-too-aware of the growing crisis facing them.
Across the country people are reeling over new policies that are costing jobs, lowering quality of care for seniors on Medicare and making medical equipment supplies less accessible to those in need. Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) implemented a new reimbursement rate procedure that is driving rural medical equipment providers out of business. This new policy was enacted at the beginning of this year without proper evaluation to ensure the stated objectives would be met and that unintended consequences were not created. Unfortunately, both of these results have come to pass.
