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The Council for Quality Respiratory Care (CQRC)-a coalition of the nation’s leading home respiratory therapy providers and manufacturing companies-thanked The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for the appropriate application of recent legislative action to eliminate the budget neutrality statutory requirement to certain home oxygen equipment and services. By doing so, CMS has preserved…

With covid-19 cases surging and hospital capacity dwindling, you rightly point out that the nation’s oxygen supply chain is being stretched to the limit (”In Los Angeles and Beyond, Oxygen Is the Latest Covid Bottleneck,” Jan. 7). Given unprecedented demand and a global shortage of critical supplies including oxygen concentrators, the severe pressures in the…

DME industry leaders ask CMS to extend Medicare flexibilities and make permanent the 50-50 blended rate for rural areas WASHINGTON, DC – The Council for Quality Respiratory Care – a coalition of the nation’s leading home respiratory therapy providers and manufacturing companies – partnered with the American Association for Homecare and The VGM Group in sending a…

WASHINGTON – CMS’s competitive bidding program set the stage for a number of the difficulties that the HME industry is seeing as it tries to meet increased demand for oxygen therapy for COVID-19 patients, say the leaders of Apria Healthcare and Lincare and the Council of Quality Respiratory Care.  The agency may have dropped oxygen from Round 2021, its latest round of bidding, but 10 years since the program’s kickoff and…