Category: Reimbursement
Reimbursement
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are planning a meeting to discuss on- and off-label uses of bone-morphogenetic proteins used in several orthopedic implants and procedures.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are planning a September meeting to examine the on- and off-label uses of bone-morphogenetic proteins used in several prominent spinal implants and procedures.
The Sept. 22 meeting of the agency's Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee will look to answer a number of questions about the products, including "the clinical benefits and harms of on-label and off -label use of BMPs," according to its website.
No matter how free communication becomes between the Food & Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, it's still going to require a lot of post-approval data to drive coverage decisions.
The Food & Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services signed a Memorandum of Understanding June 23 intended to promote data-sharing between the two agencies. Announcement of the MOU came from Center for Devices & Radiological Health director Dr. Jeffrey Shuren at a June 24 public workshop on device innovation. The MOU, Shuren said, "will allow for the first time routine and timely sharing of information and expertise between our two agencies to strengthen our ability to achieve our respective missions.
President Barack Obama, in an end-run around Republican opposition, uses a recess appointment to install Dr. Donald Berwick as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
President Barack Obama used his recess appointment power to install his choice to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Donald Berwick, thwarting Republican opposition to the pick.
It's a blow to Republicans in the U.S. Senate, which is on its summer break. Senate Republicans had vowed to stall Berwick's appointment ostensibly for his support of "rationing" healthcare. Berwick will now avoid a contentious nomination hearing and serve as chief of CMS, which has lacked a leader since 2006, until the end of 2011.
A temporary proposal from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could be a boon for Organogenesis Inc. and Advanced BioHealing Inc. and their artificial skin treatments for diabetic foot ulcers.
Organogenesis Inc. and Advanced BioHealing Inc. may win a new reimbursement code for their skin regenerating systems.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed temporary, updated coding for artificial skin products in treating diabetic foot ulcers, slated to take effect in 2011.
The proposal would standardize the reimbursement codes for the Apligraf product made by Canton, Mass.-based Organogenesis and Advanced BioHealing's Dermagraft, which now are reimbursed according to different schemes.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will allow full reimbursement for Cambridge Heart Inc.'s Microvolt T-Wave Alternans test when it's performed along with a stress test.
Starting today, physicians who use a heart test made by Cambridge Heart Inc. (OTC:CAMH) along with a standard stress test will be fully reimbursed for the exams, after a decision by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services allowing the reimbursement.
"Reimbursement Row" blogger Kathryn Barry looks at proposed changes to CMS physician fee schedule.
Basic facts:
The Medicare fee schedule "fix" isn't a fix at all and only postpones the mounting problems with Medicare reimbursement rates.
As reported on this website, the U. S. House of Representatives has signed on to an additional six month "fix" for the unacceptable 21 percent reduction in Medicare physician reimbursements required under current law. So ends yet another sad and frustrating chapter in an extended epic of Congressional dithering on healthcare policy. For years, the perceived political cost has dissuaded Congress from any frontal effort to revise the wrong-headed and obviously ineffective 10-year-old sustainable growth rate (PDF) formula for limiting growth in Medicare spending or physicians' services.
