Working With the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Friday, March 13th, 2026
Hello, my name is Cara Bachenheimer, and I head up the government affairs practice here at Brown Fortunato. I’m based in Washington, D.C., and much of my practice focuses on working with Congress, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (or CMS), and other federal agencies.
Federal healthcare policy decisions impact patients, providers, distributors, manufacturers, and all others in the healthcare delivery industry. Federal government agencies make coverage and funding decisions that impact whether and how new medical device technology can be successful in the market.
Medicare is often viewed as the leader in these decisions, driving other payers’ coverage and payment decisions for these technologies. One of our key practice areas involves helping medical device manufacturers successfully navigate these processes to bring new medical device technology to the U.S. market.
The federal government’s coding, coverage, and payment processes are three separate processes with different requirements and typically take at least a year and often longer to complete. It’s critically important for manufacturers to understand the required criteria and processes as early as possible in product development.
We help clients work with Medicare and its contractors at the national and regional levels to obtain the best possible coding coverage and payment decisions.
We also work with our home medical equipment, or HME, and other provider clients, facilitating interactions and communications with CMS and its contractors to resolve issues that arise as a result of policy interpretation, audits, including Medicare TPEs, and other issues
Please feel free to contact us. We look forward to working with you. Thanks.