Competitive Bidding started as a national competition for mail order items to help improve processes, eliminate fraud and streamline the order process for those using CMS services. As many know, the road has definately been rocky, with revisions and corrections of the program, and it is considered a great program by some and an enormous financial debacle by others.
Shortly after it was intitiated, CMS found that some of the suppliers were substituting blood glucose meters and other durable medical equipment included in the Competetive Bid program for products that allowed for a better margin for the supplier. As a response, CMS reviewed the Competetive Bid Act, and revised the Act in November 2011 to include the following:
"Federal Regulations inlcude an "anti-switching" provision as a term of the contract for suppliers under the national mail-order competition for diabetic supplies. This regulation prohibits contract suppliers from influencing or incentivizing beneficiaries to switch their current glucose monitor and testing supplies brand to another brand. The anti-switching rule requires contract suppliers to furnish the brand of testing supplies that work with the monitor currently used by the beneficiary. This rule was established to protect beneficiary and physician choice of gucose monitors. If a contract suplier does not carry the brand the beneficiary has been using, it can inform the beneficiary that it does not carry that brand. The beneficiary may then engage the contract supplier about alternative brands and the supplier can describe what brands it offers; however, the supplier cannot be the one to initiate this conversation. It is important to know that suppliers can frunish alternative brands of glucose monitors at little or no cost to a beneficiary who decides to switch to an alternative brand. Manufacturer rebates and trrade-in promotions have been widespread for several decades and have significantly reduced or, in most cases, entirely eliminated the cost of switching from one glucose monitor brand to another."
A challenge in this revision is that when told that their monitor brand is not carried by that supplier, the beneficiary is left with little recourse other than to switch to another brand monitor. The question then presented is - Why do suppliers have to carry any brand but the one they want everyone to switch to? While one could argue that choice is provided to the beneficiary, it appears to be a manipulated choice.
As a diabetes educator, I do see the impact of Competitive Bid on my patients. Do you?