Posts from — November 2007

Recently appointed Michael Cannizzaro, vice chairman, president and CEO of Sunrise Medical has hired Pete Coburn as senior vice president of mobility sales and marketing. Coburn is recently from Cardinal Health Medical Products.

November 14 is World Diabetes Day

Go here to see how the world can join in in fighting this disease.

On 20 December 2006, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 61/225. This landmark Resolution recognizes diabetes as a chronic, debilitating and costly disease associated with major complications that pose severe risks for families, countries and the entire world. It designates 14 November, the current World Diabetes Day, as a United Nations Day to be observed every year beginning in 2007.

Diabetes in Children and Adolescents

The theme of this year’s World Diabetes Day campaign is Diabetes in Children and Adolescents.Diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases of childhood. It can strike children at any age, including pre-school children and even toddlers. Yet diabetes in children is often diagnosed late, when the child has diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), or it is misdiagnosed completely. In many parts of the world, insulin, the main life-saving medication that children with diabetes need to survive, is not available (or is available but remains inaccessible for reasons of economy, geography or constraints on supply). As a consequence, many children die of diabetes, particularly in low and middle-income countries. Those closest to the child - family, school staff, family doctor - may not be aware of the ominous signs. The World Diabetes Day 2007 and 2008 campaigns set out to challenge this and firmly establish the message that ‘no child should die of diabetes’.

Governments have acknowledged that diabetes is increasing at epidemic rates and is affecting all countries. For the first time, a non-infectious disease has been seen as posing as serious a global health threat as infectious epidemics such as HIV/AIDS.

Update: If you are going to be in San Francisco be sure to go and visit Coit Tower. Read more about it at Diabetes Mine.

After all the trauma of the recent deep reimbursement cuts by Medicare, the Office of Inspector General in the United States has found that Medicare, in certain cases pays 35% to 45% more than internet advertised prices for certain power wheelchairs.

The industry is quick to protest and will argue “the higher bar” that Medicare providers have to attain accounts for the difference in cost.

Nevertheless - here is the recommendation of the Office of Inspector General.

RECOMMENDATION
We found that consumers could have purchased most power wheelchairs over the Internet at prices lower than the Medicare fee schedule amounts. We recommend that CMS: Consider performing additional reviews to determine whether the current Medicare power wheelchair fee schedule amounts for certain groups and procedure codes are appropriate.

And Medicare agrees:

AGENCY COMMENTS AND OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL
RESPONSE
CMS concurred with our recommendation. In addition, CMS noted that, in mid-2008, Medicare payment amounts for power wheelchairs in 10 large metropolitan statistical areas will be based on power wheelchair suppliers’ competitive bids. CMS further noted that it has the authority in future years to use payment information from the competitive bidding program to adjust payments in areas not included in the program. OIG work is continuing in this area. We plan to conduct further evaluations to compare Medicare fee schedule amounts to actual prices paid by suppliers.

The report goes on to estimate a total saving to Medicare and consumers of close to $40 million in the first quarter of 2007.

Again there will be a counter argument from the industry which will point to the extra regulatory and service hurdles that Medicare imposes.

The fact of the matter is that - pricing (and reimbursement) on Power mobility products is under strong review (again). CMS is looking to their newly established national competitive bidding process to lower prices - and it, together with other measures it will take, will again reduce the price of power wheelchairs to the government and consumers.

The full OIG (smallish pdf download) report can be found here.