Medicare surety bonds and requirements for DMEPOS suppliers
Did you know that Medicare surety bonds provide a number of services to protect suppliers and the customers they serve. A surety bond limits the number of suppliers to Medicare to decrease the amount of fraudulent claims. The surety bond also ensures that Medicare patients are receiving only quality medical supplies from suppliers that are legitimate. The Medicare enrollment process for suppliers helps to weed out the less than reputable companies that are known to have used abusive billing practices or made fraudulent claims.
The requirement for suppliers to have a DMEPOS surety bond to work with Medicare patients only became final at the beginning of 2009. This ruling affects all new suppliers applying to work with Medicare. Most existing suppliers working with Medicare must meet these new requirements by the end of the year. There are some suppliers that are exempt from the rule, but these are few. The only suppliers that do not have to apply for a surety bond to work with Medicare patients are those that produce custom-made prosthetics or orthotics.