Medicare Changes Force Nashville Company To Give Up 6,000 Customers

Nashville-based AmMed Direct says it will lose 6,000 customers July 1 if a new Medicare rule isn’t delayed.

AmMed provides diabetic testing supplies to 100,000 customers across the country. Its contract to keep providing those supplies to Medicare patients was not renewed. In fact, none of the top tier diabetic supply companies had their contracts renewed, including Liberty, the largest diabetes testing supplier whose spokesman is Wilford Brimley.

The companies left out blame Medicare’s new competitive bidding initiative. Citing a projected $10 billion in savings, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services opened the bidding process to any company which said it could supply products to Medicare patients at a lower cost. When the contracts were awarded, many in the industry were shocked at which companies won. Instead of familiar names and industry leaders, smaller, unknown companies were awarded contracts, some worth millions of dollars.

Critics, like AmMed’s Chief Operating Officer Tom Milam, complain the companies weren’t carefully vetted.

“CMS is failing the provider network as well as the beneficiary in the way they’ve gone about it. Several of them are companies that do not have a state or local license to do business or provide that service in that community.”

Milam says there is further proof the awarding process was flawed. Last week, he received two calls from companies that received Medicare contracts asking if AmMed wanted buy their firms to get its Medicare customers back. Milam says he declined. He and others are now pinning their hopes on a bill in the U.S. Senate that will delay the implementation of competitive bidding. The U.S. House passed the measure on Tuesday.