Now that both the House and Senate have passed an extension of the DME accreditation deadline to Jan. 1, 2010, there are some new instructions from CMS for pharmacists making decisions about whether to participate in the Medicare Part B DMEPOS program.

• The NSC will not process pending "step-down" applications received from pharmacies during the week of Sept. 28. This means pharmacies  may continue to bill for all of the products and services for which they were licensed and/or approved by the NSC to furnish prior to submission of the "step-down" request. The NSC will not need to reprocess these submissions.

• If a pharmacy decided to voluntarily terminate its relationship with Medicare and the pharmacy would like to continue to maintain its DMEPOS billing privileges, the pharmacy must notify the NSC in writing by Oct. 23. Inform the NSC that the pharmacy is rescinding its previous voluntarily termination request. This new request should be signed by the authorized or delegated official on file with  the NSC.

• Finally, as a reminder, pharmacies are subject to the surety bond requirements. Thus, if a pharmacy has not obtained and submitted a surety bond, the pharmacy is required to do so.

Stay tuned!