ATTENTION ALL NAAOP MEMBERS AND FRIENDS:
We need your help now! Please take a moment today or over the next week to contact your Member of Congress and urge them to support H.R. 5262, the Medicare Orthotic and Prosthetic Patient-Centered Care Act.
On November 22, 2019, the Medicare Orthotic and Prosthetic Patient-Centered Care Act (H.R. 5262) was formally introduced in the House of Representatives by Representatives Mike Thompson (D-CA), Glenn Thompson (R-PA), G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), and Brett Guthrie (R-KY). AOPA has taken the lead on this important legislation while NAAOP and the other O&P Alliance partners have been working to support the bill. This legislation has been under development all year long and we are very pleased with its formal introduction. The bill was referred to the House Ways & Means and Energy & Commerce Committees.
The bill text has not yet been released, but will be available here in the next few days. NAAOP, AOPA, and the rest of the Alliance organizations are conducting a widespread grassroots campaign to garner additional congressional support for the bill. We strongly urge you to participate.
The Medicare O&P Patient-Centered Care Act would:
Distinguish in statute the clinical, service-oriented nature of O&P from the commodity-based nature of the Durable Medical Equipment benefit;
Restore the intended meaning of “off-the-shelf” (OTS) orthotics to limit competitive bidding only to those that truly require minimal self-adjustment by the patient only;
Exempt certified and/or licensed orthotists and prosthetists from the requirement to have a competitive bidding contract to provide OTS orthoses; and,
Ban drop shipping to patients’ homes of all prosthetic limbs and orthotic braces that do not fit the bill’s new definition of “off-the-shelf” orthotics.
These provisions would protect patient access to the clinical expertise needed to achieve the full therapeutic value of pre-fabricated or custom-fit orthoses and prostheses, while saving the Medicare program significant dollars by reducing waste, fraud, and abuse. The bill would also separate in statute the O&P benefit from the commodity-based DME benefit.
We look forward to working with our membership, as well as AOPA and our Alliance partners, to push towards enactment of this House bill and to introduce a companion bill in the U.S. Senate.
To CONTACT YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS, go to www.naaop.org and click on the “Congressional Action Center.” Follow the directions to send a personalized email to your Member of Congress. Take the further step of posting to your social media. Thank you.