CRE Files FOIA Request with CMS for Competitive Bidding Documents

Editor’s Note:  The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness filed a FOIA request with CMS for documents regarding the development of the DMEPOS competitive bidding program.  Specifically, CRE is seeking:

All agency records concerning the National Technical Expert Panel (NTEP) that was convened by the Health Care Financing Agency (HCFA, now CMS) to gather feedback regarding the design of the Durable Medical Equipment (DME) competitive bidding project and to engage in communication with interested members of the public. This FOIA request concerns the HCFA/CMS expert panel referred to on pages 1-5 to 1-6 of the report on CMS’s website, “Evaluation of Medicare’s Competitive Bidding Demonstration for DMEPOS: First-Year Annual Evaluation Report HCFA Contract No. 500-95-0061/T.O. #3” available at https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Demonstration-Projects/DemoProjectsEvalRpts/downloads/karon_2001_1.pdf

CRE’s FOIA letter is attached here.

CRE expects to use information obtained from the letter in preparation for the Data Quality Act petition discussed here.