Shares of Abiomed (NSDQ:ABMD) surged nearly 10% today after news broke that Medicare will maintain the reimbursement rate for its flagship Impella heart pump.
The Danvers, Mass.-based medical device company’s stock took a roller-coaster ride last month on an analyst’s speculation that the government health program would cut the reimbursement rate for the Impella pump.
A meeting of a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services committee last week prompted Northland Capital Markets’ Suraj Kalia to surmise that a planned update of the definitions for reimbursement codes would cut the rate for treatment with the Impella device. Abiomed shares plunged 19% on the speculation, only to rebound when the company explained that the CMS proposal wouldn’t necessarily mean any changes to the codes assigned to treatment with Impella.
But yesterday Medicare proposed to maintain the current reimbursement structure for treatment with Impella, prompting investors to send ABMD shares up 9.3% to $23.70 apiece as of about 1:15 p.m. today.
In a separate release, Abiomed said yesterday that it plans to file the final clinical analysis module of its pre-market approval application with the FDA for its Impella 2.5 device in February 2014. Abiomed also said the Recover Right trial of its Impella RP device has enrolled about a third of the expected 30 patients.