The American Association for Homecare (AAHomecare) is urging stakeholders to support a Congressional sign-on letter seeking to exclude urological, ostomy and tracheostomy supplies from Medicare’s competitive bidding program — or at least to delay these supplies’ inclusion.
In a Feb. 9 email to the industry, AAHomecare said this effort is being led by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who penned the letter to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz.
The letter expresses “concern” that urological, ostomy and tracheostomy supplies are currently part of competitive bidding’s next round: “We respectfully urge you to halt this implementation or, at a minimum, significantly delay the new proposed bidding protocols for these prosthetic products to allow for a thorough review of the serious concerns outlined below.”
Smith noted that these supplies “are not interchangeable, off-the-shelf commodity items easily sent by mail without the need for clinical fitting and support,” and instead described them as “highly individualized prosthetics used by hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries.”
The letter described the wide range of patients who use these supplies, including those with “spina bifida, paralysis, colorectal cancer, bladder cancer and other serious chronic conditions,” adding that the appropriate supplies can help to “avoid life-threatening infections and hospitalizations; participate in employment; maintain continence and dignity; and breathe safely and effectively.”
“Wound, ostomy and continence clinicians across the country emphasize that these products cannot be managed with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ assumption,” Smith said in the letter. “The precise fit and clinical appropriateness of these devices are matters of life and death.”
CMS is expediting restart of competitive bidding
Smith also noted that last November’s home health final rule that announced the restart of competitive bidding “places the beginning of the bidding process in spring 2026. This abbreviated timeline is particularly alarming to clinicians and patient advocates given that these specific items have never been subject to national competitive bidding.”
Adding these supplies to competitive bidding categories “will not offer significant cost savings and will undermine President Trump’s commitment to lower health care costs,” Smith added. “Ostomy, tracheostomy and urological supplies represent a relatively small portion of overall Medicare spending. These products are both absolutely essential to patients and already considered low cost.”
The “preventable hospitalizations and complications” that will result from the use of suboptimal supplies, the letter predicted, “will generate enormous costs in Medicare Part A — far exceeding any savings through proposed, uncertain part B reductions.”
“DME [durable medical equipment] companies who furnish these supplies are encouraged to ask their representative to join the sign-on letter to delay implementation of competitive bidding for ostomy and urological products,” AAHomecare said. “Please share the letter with the Congressional staffer who handles health care issues and ask the representative to join the letter.”
The link to the sign-on letter will be visible to Congressional staffers.
The letter is accepting signatures from members of the House of Representatives through Feb. 20.
