WASHINGTON, D.C. – AAHomecare confirmed earlier this month that HHS and CMS FY 2026 budget documents had included information on plans to restart the DMEPOS Competitive Bidding Program (CPB). CMS’ Appropriations request document indicated that CMS will start bidding for the next round after re-engineering and migrating IT systems located within the CBIC IT environment into the CMS Cloud environment, as well as going through a formal rulemaking and comment process.

The Agency is also tasked with implementing changes to CBP that: 1) establish sustainable prices; 2) save money for Medicare beneficiaries and taxpayers; 3) limit fraud, waste, and abuse; and 4) ensure beneficiary access to quality items and services.

AAHomecare and the HME community will be tasked with holding CMS to that goal of establishing sustainable prices, along with those other laudable priorities. Maintaining these hard-won improvements to the CPB that our industry fought for will be an important part of the process:

• Requiring bidders to be properly qualified and able to stand by their bids
• Ensuring appropriate price-setting mechanisms and transparency.
• Removing bid ceilings based on previous bidding round results.
• Keeping product categories that are not conducive to a bidding process out of the program.

In addition, HME stakeholders will seek to limit CMS’ ability to cancel any bidding results where they are not satisfied with the prices established.

A new CMS proposed rule that includes the bidding program is expected soon. Developing and delivering a strong response from the HME community and other clinician and patient advocacy groups will be a critical first step in making sure results from this CBP round reflect market realities for suppliers providing high quality products and services.

Looking at Previous CBP Timelines 
How long will suppliers have until it’s time to submit bids and see results? Nothing in the HHS or CMS budget documents hints at a timeline – and the time needed to re-engineer and migrate IT systems into the CMS Cloud environment adds another unknown.

A look at the timelines for the most-recent CBP iterations is a reminder the bidding process can move quickly once announced. However, the planned IT migration and the rulemaking/comment process will need to be completed before the program moves forward.