Big Insurance Wants My Card

My Blue Cross provider is requiring that I send my S9 card to the DME "at least once per year" before they will pay for more supplies. The DME has sent me a return mailer made by ReasMed for this purpose.

I've seen this mentioned in the past by others...

I think I'd like to copy the data to another card and mail that one, so I don't have to part with MY copy. Is this workable? Anyone already tried it?

Shouldn't be a problem to send a copy of the SD card.
To make sure that you have an exact duplicate you might make the copy and use it with your software to confirm that the software can read the new copy. As long as the copy works..they won't know the difference unless they notice the brand name and you can either own up to it or just tell them the card got damaged somehow.

Alternately you can take a blank SD card and put it in the S9 and the machine will write everything that is stored on the machine to the blank new card. There's enough data stored on the machine to prove usage and effectiveness.
Some detailed graphs are lost but insurance and DMEs don't look at those anyway...they look at compliance hours used.

My card became corrupt and, when I took my S9 machine to an area office in our town, I found that the data is also stored in your machine as well as on the card (so the machine is the backup source of data.)

The insurance company wants to see proof that you use your machine. The data is there on the card (or S9 machine) for every signal night. It's really interesting. You can see exactly what time each night you start using your machine, how long you leave it on, when you take it off, if you use it for naps, if and when and how bad are the leaks, and what the pressure variation is during the night and how many and how bad are the apnea events, for example. All this information is in the machine for the past 3 months, or past year, or for the time you've had your machine-the technician gets to choose the time frame, and the software spits out a report. The doctor is usually most interested in the past 3 months.

To save the data on your computer, you have to buy a card reader adaptor, which I did, but I've never tried it out. The copays my insurance wants are about the same price as buying items directly off of the web. But I go ahead and do it that way because the extra insurance money pays the salary of the area office technicians and they are willing to print off a copy of the reports for me...you sound like you are savy enough to figure out how to print your own reports. You need the S9 software (if you want to print your own reports as well as save the data) which you can probably find on the web somewhere; but I don't know if you have to prove you are a provider to get the software (for example, giving them a medical license number - some things require that). Good luck.

Pricer39:

I was wondering if I might be able to get the data onto a fresh card directly from the S9.

I do use ResScan software and my laptop has a card reader so there's no problem on that end.

Pugsy:
which way would you recommend I go about this? (Keep in mind that on the one hand I do have decent equipment, but on the other hand I'm a product of the Neanderthal School For Computer Users...)

Big Insurance Wants My Card

And Big Kennerly wants their money to pay for his supplies. lol

Just buy/get/use and old one from somewhere ....a blank SD card....stick it in the S9 and let it write the data to the SD card...
Remove the newly created SD card briefly then...plug it back into the S9...this step is to verify that the S9 will recognize the card and it is a nice working card...if the card was bad the S9 will tell you it is invalid.
If the S9 is happy with the card then for sure ResScan (what your DME uses to verify compliance) will be happy because it isn't nearly as picky as the S9 about cards.

The detailed data that is not stored on your machine and which of course won't be on the newly created card isn't something the DME needs or will miss and insurance company doesn't care either.
All they want is verification that he machine is being used x number of hours for most nights.

You don't have to make a copy of the SD card. Just let the S9 do it for you. Send the newly created copy and keep your original.

Boyce wrote:

Big Insurance Wants My Card

And Big Kennerly wants their money to pay for his supplies. lol

You bet.

Pugsy wrote:Just buy/get/use and old one from somewhere ....a blank SD card....stick it in the S9 and let it write the data to the SD card...

You don't have to make a copy of the SD card. Just let the S9 do it for you. Send the newly created copy and keep your original.

Thanks Pugsy that's how I'll do it. As always you're a big help.

The 2G cards are hard enough to find; any backup would be too good to send to the insurance.
Use the original, but insist they send your card back --ASAP!
Edit: Oh, wait; this is coming from the DME! Call your insurance company and ask if this is really true!
DME's are very good at making crap up.

Just print the reports to a file with a program like CutePDF and email it to them. Or, print a summary file to paper and mail it to them.


Den

.

I have had a similar request. My DME was close, so I was able to bring the card to the DME, they got the data then and there, and gave the the card back.

If that does not work see if you can have your DR download and send in the report. My DR wanted to see my data every visit, so I got use to bringing in the card, they read it and gave it right back.


If you can not do either of these, then try a second card working and send them the original. I had a few few problems getting a new card working in my S9 when mine was damaged..... someone dropped it on teh floor and rolled over it with the chair...... not me

I think that I ended up formatting it to FAT32 on the PC, putting it in the machine which them complained and reformatted it, putting on all of the data that was needed.

Just print out the last 30 days of data and send the report to the dme. That's all they need. They are looking for 21/30 days >4 hours of usage per Bcbs guidelines.

Kennerly wrote:My Blue Cross provider is requiring that I send my S9 card to the DME "at least once per year" before they will pay for more supplies. The DME has sent me a return mailer made by ResMed for this purpose.

Turns out that there actually was a blank ResMed SD card tucked into the mailer where I hadn't noticed it. So I was able to just slip it into my S9 and send it back, didn't have to part with my regular card nor buy a new one. Simple as can be. Except for the part where I didn't see the card the first time around...

Now that's the way it should always be. --if it should be at all.

Kennerly wrote:

Boyce wrote:

Big Insurance Wants My Card

And Big Kennerly wants their money to pay for his supplies. lol

You bet.

Kennerly wrote:Turns out that there actually was a blank ResMed SD card tucked into the mailer where I hadn't noticed it.

You better look a third time. There may be cash in there to pay for your supplies.