One of our office staff was on a Region A webinar today, and learned that we cannot bill for the routine concentrator maintenance (starting 6 months after it caps) if the concentrator is still under warranty. This doesn't really make sense, since that's never covered under warranty. Does anyone have different information?
That information is correct. Your thinking on it is also correct. Medicare equates warranty with "free". In any other industry not doing routine maintenance voids the warranty. In our industry we are prohibited from doing PMs unless we do them for free!
Invacare concentrators w/OCI prior to last year had a 5 year warranty. And, any patient that had been switched out before the cap with a new (or newer) concentrator could be in months 36+ with a warranty machine
Warranty or not, I don't think is an issue. Get a copy of that warranty and keep it on file. I'm sure routine maintenance is NOT covered under that warranty. If I'm wrong, I may just switch over and start buying Invacare concentrators.
CMS doesn't care whether or not it's covered by warranty. If the concentrator is under warranty, they claim we shouldn't be billing for any type of maintenance. If it wasn't obvious before that they have absolutely no understanding of how our businesses operate, this should help.
What about the fact that the manufacturer requires routine maintenance to be performed (IE changing internal filter) or the manufacturer warranty is void? Does CMS think we should provide this service in the 24 months at no charge? Or are they suggesting that we "train the patient" to perform these services and leave us completely out of the loop?
In terms of the Medicare stationary oxygen reimbursement, unfortunately they consider the 36 mo payments sufficient to cover 60 months of service. It's just front-loaded, not free for the last 24 mo, in their estimation.
Billing for concentrator service and maintenance
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