Tampa FL — Oxebridge has stopped providing CMS Accreditation preparation services, citing a few factors including a new management position that opposes Medicare accreditation for DME providers. The full statement follows:

Effectively immediately, we have elected to cease offering Oxebridge’s Rapid CMS Accreditation Prep services for durable medical equipment companies and medical supply providers. We believe that continuing to offer these services supports a failed and broken system which had much promise, but which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) grossly mismanaged, to the point of detriment to thousands of companies across the United States. Oxebridge does not want to continue to support this broken system, one which has been called a “slaughter of American jobs” by Oxebridge VP Operations, Christopher Paris.

When the idea of third party accreditation of Medicare suppliers was first promoted by CMS, it was touted as a “quality improvement” program. According to CMS, the intent was to improve the level of quality of both products and services to durable medical equipment buyers, including those purchasing life-saving oxygen.

CMS’ bungling of its “Round One” rollout of the program is well documented elsewhere, and we need not go into it. But after this, CMS changed its tone and dropped all pretense that the system was targeted to improve quality. Instead, CMS re-branded the accreditation program as an “anti-fraud” measure, and began adding tougher rules which further alienated companies and drove some out of business entirely, wiping out tens of thousands of American jobs. One such rule included the “banning” of consignment closets which could have operated safely and effectively under the CMS rules, had CMS allowed them to.

Despite this, Medicare fraud continues unabated in both the DME areas, as well as other important healthcare arenas that are not subject to the accreditation. in short, the program is not working, has not worked, and shows no ability to work in the future.

Another problem lies with CMS impossibly foolish oversight in denying Deeming Authorities from simultaneously offering preparation consulting services. Other standards bodies and industries, such as ISO 9001 or AS9100 for aerospace, understand that consultants cannot audit the systems they create, and impose firewalls to prevent such arrangements. The financial industry learned this lesson after the Enron / Arthur Andersen scandals. CMS chose not to prohibit this, either from ignorance or pressure from powerful bodies. For example, Compliance Team simultaneously offers preparation services — including development of manuals, training programs, etc. — under its “Exemplary Provider” services. Those are then audited by Compliance Team, at times by the very same individual who performed the consulting or wrote the manuals. Oxebridge views this as buying accreditation, plain and simple. It helps no one but the Deeming Authority.

In the beginning, Oxebridge felt it could at least offer its services at a low cost to assist such companies in “weathering” the situation because of our experience in ISO 9001, a similar third party certification scheme. However, we now feel that this is only promoting a hopelessly broken accreditation program, and we cannot continue.

We recommend DME and medical supply providers continue to fight against CMS Accreditation by contacting their state legislators and vigorously voicing their opposition.

Advertisements

ISO Benchmark

Why we report on these topics

Since 2000, Oxebridge has worked to improve ISO and related certification schemes by identifying problems and then proposing solutions. We report on issues affecting standards users because so few other news outlets do. Our belief is that in order to fix the problems in these schemes, we must first understand the nature and breadth of those problems. Our reporting aims to do just that. Elsewhere on the Oxebridge site you will find White Papers and other articles proposing ideas to correct these problems.