A home healthcare trade group whose board of directors includes officials of Lake Forest-based Apria Healthcare Group Inc. is taking on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services about its competitive bidding program for medical equipment.
The American Association for Homecare of Arlington, Va., put out a statement arguing that Medicare’s program, which started in 2008, “is plagued by myths and misinformation.”
Medicare administrators are seeking to lower costs by using competitive bidding to purchase medical equipment, rather than paying device makers a set fee. Administrators say the competitive bidding process will reduce overcharging and fraud in the federal program, which serves some 43 million elderly and disabled Americans.
The government said at the time it put the program in place that it hoped to save more than $1 billion a year.
Apria and other home healthcare companies provide breathing, drug and other treatments to patients in their homes. About a quarter of Apria’s $2 billion in yearly sales comes from Medicare.
“To characterize the bidding program as an anti-fraud mechanism is extremely misleading,” the association said in its release.
Instead, the “real solution” to keep criminals out of Medicare is better screening, real-time claim audits and better enforcement mechanisms, the association said.
Some of the group’s ideas to stop fraud are in a pair of bills before Congress, it said.
The association is backing a bill authored by Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Florida Democrat. The legislation would eliminate the competitive bidding process.
The legislation is expected to be folded into another Medicare bill, such as the annual “doc fix” bill that endeavors to keep doctors’ payments from being cut. A doc fix bill should be coming up within the next few months.
Home healthcare providers also are dealing with last month’s healthcare reform, which expands the competitive bidding process and eliminates a purchasing option for standard power wheelchairs. It also imposes a $20 billion, 10-year tax on medical device makers.
The American Association for Homecare represents more than 3,000 home health locations nationally. Lisa Getson, Apria’s executive vice president of government relations, is a member of the group’s executive committee. Other Apria officials chair various association councils, such as those for medical gases and regulatory matters.
Retinal Disease Meeting
Several Orange County eye device makers and investors came together in March to discuss and address research into treating and curing degenerative diseases of the retina in the back of the eye.
The event was sponsored by the Foundation Fighting Blindness, which provides funding for retinal degenerative disease research. It took place in Newport Beach at the Fairmont Hotel.
According to the foundation, about 10 million Americans have retinal degenerative diseases at an annual cost of nearly $70 billion. The foundation projects that the number of people who will develop them will double by 2020, given the aging population.
William Link, a Newport Beach-based managing director of Versant Venture Management LLC, welcomed attendees and moderated an investors panel. James Mazzo, president of Santa Ana’s Abbott Medical Optics, part of Chicago’s Abbott Laboratories, moderated a session on early stage device makers that are addressing retinal diseases.
Scott Whitcup, executive vice president, research and development for Irvine-based Allergan Inc., moderated an industry panel that included Leonard Borrmann, Abbott Medical’s vice president, research and development, and J. Andy Corley, an Orange County-based corporate vice president and global president of surgical products for Bausch & Lomb Inc.
Cortex Sells Compounds
Cortex Pharmaceuticals Inc., an Irvine-based drug developer, said it sold selected drug compounds and patents covering respiratory depression and complications related to sickle-cell disease to a unit of Canadian drug maker Biovail Corp. in a deal that eventually could be worth $25 million.
Cortex said in a release that it sold some of its Ampakine compounds, including CX717 for respiratory depression that’s in second-stage clinical trials, to Biovail Laboratories International SRL.
The deal includes a $10 million purchase price, and Biovail could pay up to an additional $15 million based on reaching defined clinical development milestones.
Cortex said the deal allows it to retain rights to non-injectable dosage forms of the CX1739 compound for all potential uses outside of respiratory depression, and that Biovail would continue to allow Cortex to work on a treatment for sleep apnea.
The company was started in the 1990s around neurosciences research done at the University of California, Irvine.
Early on, Cortex had high hopes for its compounds, called Ampakines, to treat memory disorders and other conditions.
Bits and Pieces:
Saddleback College in Mission Viejo said it received a $378,000 grant from the state of California that would be used to expand its medical assistant curriculum. In a release, the college said the money would allow more students to enter the entry level medical billing and coding program … Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills hosted a forum on medical careers for high school students last
month. The forum was put on by Vital Link of Newport Beach; partners included Edwards Lifesciences Corp., an Irvine heart device maker.
