The DMEPOS Enrollment Moratorium Has Ended, Here’s What Actually Happens Now

On August 27, 2026, CMS let a six-month nationwide moratorium on new DMEPOS Medicare enrollment applications expire, rather than extending it. If you’ve been sitting on a CMS-855S waiting for the freeze to lift, applications are open again as of this week. But “open again” isn’t the same as “back to normal,” and most of the coverage of this hasn’t explained the part that actually matters for anyone filing now.

What the moratorium was, and why CMS imposed it

CMS announced the moratorium in a February 27, 2026 Federal Register notice, freezing initial Medicare enrollment applications and changes in majority ownership for seven categories of DMEPOS medical supply companies. The stated reason was program integrity: CMS uses moratorium authority under Section 6401(a) of the Affordable Care Act when it determines a supplier category presents a significant risk of fraud, waste, or abuse. The freeze didn’t touch existing suppliers already enrolled and billing, it applied specifically to new initial applications and ownership changes coming in behind them.

Why it ended when it did

CMS let the six months run their full course rather than extending it, which is itself notable given how often these moratoria get renewed. AAHomecare, the industry association that represents DMEPOS suppliers, had pushed directly on this with CMS leadership. Tom Ryan, the organization’s president and CEO, put it plainly:

Ryan also made a distinction worth sitting with: the industry wasn’t arguing against scrutiny of fraud, waste, and abuse, it was arguing for scrutiny that doesn’t block legitimate suppliers from operating while it happens. He pointed to tools like electronic verification of physician orders, a safeguard the HHS Office of Inspector General had recommended in a recent white paper, as the kind of targeted protection that catches bad actors without freezing an entire supplier category for six months.

The detail most suppliers are missing: high-risk screening

This is the part that gets buried. Under federal regulation, any provider or supplier type that was blocked from enrolling because of a moratorium gets automatically placed in the “high” screening category if they apply within six months of the moratorium being lifted. That’s not a formality. High screening means fingerprint-based criminal background checks, more extensive site visits, and materially longer processing timelines than a standard application would face.

In practice, that means an application filed in September 2026 is not moving through the same pipeline it would have moved through in January, even though the moratorium itself is gone. Suppliers who assume “the freeze is over, so this should be fast now” are setting themselves up for a longer wait than they’re expecting.

What hasn’t changed

• Florida’s separate Medicaid moratorium remains active through September 20, 2026.
• The home health and hospice moratoria are unaffected, running independently since May 13, 2026.
• Accreditation, licensing, and bonding requirements didn’t change. The moratorium controlled when CMS would accept an application, not what has to be in it.

What this means if you’re filing now

If your CMS-855S was ready to go before the freeze, this is the moment to submit it, but go in expecting the high-screening timeline, not the pre-moratorium one. Anyone planning to participate in the next round of DMEPOS Competitive Bidding should also expect a surge in application volume from suppliers who were waiting on the sidelines for exactly this moment.