BOSTON -- Towne Medical Supply has been a fixture in Shrewsbury for 41 years. Owner Mary Frances Rozak specializes in caring for women after breast cancer surgery, but her livelihood is being threatened by paperwork.

"We've got our initial page. We've got our eligibility verification. We have a prescription with a copy of her insurance card," Rozak said.

Rozak's frustration is palpable.

At least 30 to 40 percent of our business is paperwork. And the rest is providing services, and that's very skewed from where I would like to be," she said.

Some say the problem is Medicare. For example, each time she sells a cane, the paperwork piles up.

"It takes almost 11 pieces of paper to process that and then it needs to go through a clearing house, well first to my billing office then to a clearing house and wait 40 days for payment," she said.

The payment is less than $20.

"Now we have to keep everything for 10 years," she said. "It became impossible to maintain an index card, so you went from this -- all of these people became converted to a medical billing system. These are exactly the same folders that are used in a medical office," she said.

Rozak said that she wants reform.

"It's undermining the quality of care that I can give the patient," she said.

It's all about protecting the patient's privacy, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

CMS also cites a new accreditation program it says is "aimed at preventing and eliminating fraud and abuse which costs the Medicare program billions of dollars each and every year."

"I don't want to stop doing it because the paperwork has buried us," Rozak said.

Rozak worries with only four employees she may not be able to keep up, and people who've depended on her small business for decades may have to look elsewhere for personalized care.