Let's make sure we don't get limited!

Can I just say how much I appreciate our nurse practitioner group? I had a medical supplier last week who was asking me to have my Medicare patient see a MD for face-to-face for all w/c prescriptions- my goodness I was upset! but I regrouped and because I was confident I knew the most recent DME legislation (via our awesome legislative chair Deanna DiUlio and Nancy Lawton's legislative talk at last year's conference) I was able to argue that the request was not congruent with Medicare requirements and the supplier backed down and agreed I was right!

has anyone else been getting push back from suppliers about Medicare DME?

Now the sad truth is that last year a Washington state waiver expired that had been bypassing some unfortunate wording in Affordable Care Act legistlation that limited APNs in prescribing DME to Medicaid patients- and that issue is still not resolved and we still need to keep sharing our stories with legislators about how that is impacting our patients. Here in Washington state there is a group ARNPs United that I highly recommend you follow to get updates- here are 2 announcements from them: 

https://auws.enpnetwork.com/nurse-practitioner-news/192771-changes-in-ordering-home-care-and-medical-equipment-for-medicaid-patients

https://auws.enpnetwork.com/nurse-practitioner-news/196491-update-on-ordering-diabetic-supplies-for-medicaid-patients

and who do you contact with your story? well please see the attached form letter (as taken from ARNPs United website) which you can have patients fill and send to the Medicaid servicies and you can email your legislators or email us (ColumbiaRiverNP@gmail.com) and let's just keep the conversation going because we cannot lose the right to prescribe DME!