Health Care Policy Changes Due to COVID-19

Published in Member Communities on April 09, 2020

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many payers, much like CMS, have modified their coverage policies and requirements around prior authorizations, face to face meetings with patients, documentation/signatures, etc. to allow DMEPOS suppliers to continue to provide equipment and services to their patients while minimizing risk to their staff, the patients, and physicians who treat those patients. It would be great, or if nothing else at least easier, if ALL payers adopted ALL of the exact same changes at the same exact time and for the same exact duration. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Each payer makes their own changes, and at their own pace. The longer your list of payers is that you do business with, the more changes you have to try to find and keep up with. It is extremely challenging to keep up with all the changes while still trying to fulfill your other daily obligations. In an effort to make it easier for you to find some of these changes quickly and easily, VGM’s payer relations department has created a resource page that houses direct links to where those changes are summarized and housed for many individual payers and state Medicaid programs. We’re now publishing that resource here for you to access.

The list of changes within this resource tool is not all-inclusive, meaning there may be certain payers who have made changes, but those changes have not been communicated to us at VGM just yet, and therefore won’t be represented within this tool. This will also likely be a constantly changing tool, as we receive updates from payers on a daily basis. If you have questions about whether a particular payer with whom you do business has changed or relaxed any of their existing policies during this PHE, you should reach out to that payer directly to see whether they have made any changes that apply to you. Several payers have made multiple changes and updates, and each one may be housed in a different area of their website, which is why you will see some payers listed multiple times within the tool. The payers are listed in alphabetical order. If you have any questions, please reach out to Craig Douglas at 877-218-2825 or craig.douglas@vgm.com.