On 1 April 2011, 110 stakeholders in the Medicare Durable Medical Equipment (DME) industry came to the University of Maryland to discuss how the CMS’ current competitive bidding program could be improved. The participants included Medicare providers, government leaders, and auction experts. A major part of the event was the conduct of a mock auction based on the auction design proposed in Cramt...

Many recent antitrust cases concern aftermarkets: markets for goods or services used together with durable equipment but purchased after the consumer has invested in the equipment. Examples include computer parts, software upgrades, repair manuals, and training. Durable goods manufacturers are often the dominant providers of aftermarket products. The cases involve a variety of alleged anticompe...

This research studied a special-needs population under age 18 who had both private insurance and Medicaid coverage through the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA) option. We found that children with managed care plans, particularly health maintenance organizations (HMOs), tended to incur higher total expenses to TEFRA than children with indemnity plans. Our findings also sh...

BACKGROUND Preparation of respiratory-technology-dependent children for hospital discharge presents many challenges. Adequate training and education of parental caregivers, discharge planning, and coordination with the durable-medical-equipment and home-nursing companies must be completed. A process using multiple respiratory therapists (RTs) to achieve this may not be efficient. METHODS We e...

background: nowadays medical equipment plays an important role in the treatment and in the medical education. using outdated preventive maintenance (pm) system may cause problems in the cutting edge medical equipment, nervous system disease’s equipment (in diagnosis and treatment) which are crucial for every medical center. based on above facts we focused on nervous system treat units’ equipmen...

More than one-third of the US adult population and 17% of the youth are now obese, and obesity is associated with more than $147 billion a year in health care costs. Critical care nurses should understand the physiological differences and practice guidelines for patients with a body mass index greater than 30. The ABCD approach encompasses key clinical concepts in the management of critically i...

BACKGROUND Initial hospital discharge to home of technology-dependent children requires extensive training and education of the family caregivers. Education of adult family members should promote positive interactions in a nonthreatening manner while facilitating the development of the knowledge and skills to competently and independently provide all aspects of the medical care. We utilize a tr...