First the good news! I GOT MY ORDER!!! Indeed, ONE transmitter, ONE receiver (black as apparently once you are on Medicare, you go colorblind), 3 boxes of sensors! It’s so beautiful I am leaving it in the box for a few more days, just to marvel at it.
NOW, THE BAD NEWS: as reported by Nolan, referring to several TuDiabetes messages:
According to Jimbo31 and Jason99:
“I received a call this afternoon from the Dexcom Sales Executive Manager … Late Thursday, Liberty Medical informed Dexcom Management that they will no longer process orders for the G5 because of the complex Medicare requirements, and they were overwhelmed by the number of of medicare patients applying for the G5 CGM.
I informed the Dexcom Sales Manager that I wanted him to contact Liberty Medical on Monday to have them return ALL our paperwork that was submitted to them and return it to us so I can go out, and buy the G5 device on my own from another supplier since Dexcom will not sell them directly to patients. Dexcom will sell you a G4, but Medicare will NOT reimburse for that model. Dexcom is now scrambling and searching for new suppliers willing to take this task on, and has no idea how long it will take to get a new supplier(s) in place.
REALLY?!?!?!? What next? Do we all start calling Dexcom? Or Medicare/CMS?!
This information needs to be given to Medicare. Does anyone have personal contacts with any congressmen/women and/or Senators? A communicaton to Medicare shoujd be sent via a Congressman/woman or a Senator to give it some clout. If Medicare’s requirments are so complex that suppliers are unwilling to provide supplies to diabetics, something is serioously worng with Medicare’s process.
Hi Virginia … I am not clear on who determines who is able to sell CGM to Medicare patients. If it is a Medicare requirement, I understand Dexcom is working on it. But nobody knows nuthin’!
Surely, another company will step up. I hope it gets resolved sooner than later. This is so important.
It’s a peculiar problem … probably Medicare doesn’t quite understand and they keep changing the coverage requirements.
What I was told by the Dexcom New Patient Sales Manager in San Diego is that Dexcom is the one who chose to outsource this sales process to a medical supplier. Liberty Medical informed them they would take on the task, and deal with Medicare on the reimbursement process for a few more $$ from Dexcom. Well as we all know by now, Liberty Medical got overwhelmed with this process, and simply couldn’t keep up with the demand of the thousands of G5 CGM requests they were receiving from Medicare patients. Also, add to the fact that CMS kept changing the rules/requirements before they would reimburse Liberty Medical. So Liberty decided it was better to bail out now than keep processing all the paperwork requirements for CMS for so little profit $$. This is the main reason Dexcom didn’t want to sell their G5 CGM directly to Medicare patients because of ALL the silly requirements CMS keeps imposing. Congress needs to step in here and rattle CMS’ cage to get their act together and stop playing with diabetic’s lives!