During the emergency, which ended May 11, CMS issued temporary waivers. One was to waive the location requirement of the in-office ancillary services exception, which allowed physician groups to provide home delivery for some equipment, including intermittent urinary catheters, to Medicare patients without Stark law sanctions.
With the end of the PHE, however, the waiver ended, meaning Medicare beneficiaries must come to the practice’s office to pick up their durable medical equipment when they are furnished and billed by physicians.
Physician practices can still mail the equipment if the prescribing physician both personally enrolls as a Medicare durable medical equipment supplier and personally performs all the services related to the equipment. The authors of the article specified that they are not aware of any physician who meets both of these standards, however.
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