The use of durable medical equipment in the home, while not a recent development, was formally recognized by the Congress with the passage of the original Medicare legislation. Since that time the statute has been amended to provide for a more workable, economical, and desirable interface among the administrative, supplier, and user communities. To assist in achieving this end, a research proje...

LVAD is a mechanical pump supporting a weak heart function and blood flow. Sometimes, the heart may not recover fast enough to take over the pumping action immediately after surgery, in such patients a temporary support device has been employed to maintain the pumping action until the patient’s own heart recovers. This device can be considered as a temporary alternative before the process of ar...

BACKGROUND Americans spend the vast majority of their lives in built environments. Even traditionally outdoor pursuits, such as exercising, are often now performed indoors. Bacteria that colonize these indoor ecosystems are primarily derived from the human microbiome. The modes of human interaction with indoor surfaces and the physical conditions associated with each surface type determine the ...

T commercials are pervasive. Every time I hear the line, “I got a new scooter, and it didn’t cost me a dime,” I get an uneasy feeling, since the main message comes across as how to get “free stuff” from Medicare. It’s not surprising that some of the companies that provide scooters, oxygen, diabetes supplies, and various durable medical equipment (DME) have been investigated for fraud and abuse....

CMS has recently launched a series of initiatives to control Medicare spending on durable medical equipment (DME) and prosthetics, orthotics, and supplies (DMEPOS). An important question is how these initiatives will affect beneficiary satisfaction. Using survey data, we analyze Medicare beneficiary satisfaction with DMEPOS suppliers in two Florida counties. Our results show that beneficiaries ...

We examine the theoretical properties of the proposed auction format for Medicare Durable Medical Equipment. The format was used in a pilot auction in November 2009 covering nine cities and is planned for use in 100 cities in 2010. Two unusual features of the Medicare auction are 1) non-binding bids and 2) a median pricing rule in which winners are paid the median winning bid, rather than the c...

Abbreviations: (AACE)American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, (ADA) American Diabetes Association, (AMA) American Medical Association, (CGM) continuous glucose monitoring, (CMS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, (CPT) current procedural terminology, (DMEPOS) durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics, and supplies, (E/M) evaluation and management, (HCPCS) Healthcare C...

In current sport equipment evaluation and optimization, most studies consider the body and an equipment together as one system. This is partially because equipment optimization is mainly done through modification of mechanical designs, thus equipment evaluation is conducted through statistical comparisons of how different mechanical designs perform under human usage. However, it is known that a...