Medicare Competitive Bidding Registration Now Open

In case the celebratory fog of National Ballpoint Pen day caused you to miss it, registration for Round 2021 of the DMEPOS Competitive Bidding Program opened this week (June 10). Prospective bidders can log into the CMS Enterprise Portal until August 16, 2019 to add access to two applications: the DMEPOS Bidding System (DBidS) and Connexion.

Bidders will upload official bid application forms using DBidS. Connexion is the secure portal used to communicate with the Competitive Bidding Implementation Contractor (CBIC) and upload all supporting documents. All bid-related items must be submitted through these two platforms.

Suppliers that do not already have an active CMS account can register at any time.  In addition to bidding-related applications, suppliers use the CMS Enterprise Portal to access several familiar Medicare applications including myCGS, SPOT-FCSO, PS&R, Novitasphere, and HPG/HETS.

To add the bidding applications to your CMS Enterprise Portal account:

1. Validate access and match demographics exactly.
   1. Login to the CMS Enterprise Portal for the authorized official, backup authorized official, and end users for the company.
   2. Login to the PECOS account for the company.
   3. Make sure the following four identifiers match exactly across the CMS and PECOS accounts (applies to the authorized official and backup authorized official):
      1. Last name of the person registering.
      2. Social Security number.
      3. Date of birth.
      4. Email address.
2. Designate one authorized official from your PECOS CMS-855S enrollment application to act as the authorized official for bid registration purposes. 
   1. This individual must register first and then approve other users’ requests to access DBidS and Connexion.
   2. Bidders cannot share user IDs or passwords.
   3. Preselect who will serve as a back-up official.
3. Identify a PTAN for registration purposes. CMS will contract with the organization represented by the PTAN used for registration purposes:
   1. Get familiar with the official Legal Business Name (LBN) in PECOS and use it precisely and consistently - copy and paste for registration purposes to avoid errors.
      1. The LBN used for the DBidS and Connexion registration is the name that must appear on all other documents.
      2. The LBN on your company’s bid surety bond(s) must match the DBids and Connexion registration exactly.
      3. The LBN will auto-populate in the Business Organization Information section of Form A in DBidS.
   2. Sort out potential disqualification conflicts between commonly owned and commonly controlled organizations.
      1. Commonly owned and/or commonly controlled suppliers are prohibited from competing against themselves in the same competitive bidding area (CBA) and product category combination (competition). 
         1. Commonly owned suppliers are those where one or more of the entities has an ownership interest totaling at least five percent in the other(s). The term "ownership interest" is defined as "the possession of equity in the capital, stock, or profits of another supplier."
         2. Commonly controlled suppliers are those where one or more of a supplier's owners are also an officer, director, or partner of another supplier.
      2. When the bid window opens, suppliers must submit one bid (one PTAN designated as the primary location) that includes all commonly owned and/or commonly controlled locations that would furnish the lead item and all non-lead items in the same competition.

 
Don’t wait! Go ahead and verify your CMS registration and add the bid applications now so you have plenty of time to work out any issues that may impede your submission.