Significant reimbursement challenges to personalized medicine began in 2012 when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) changed payments for diagnostics from a stack of different types of codes describing different parts of lab testing to a unique code for a type of test.
The Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC) has engaged with CMS on reimbursement issues for personalized therapies and companion diagnostics in a variety of ways, most recently when Patrick Conway, M.D., Deputy Administrator for Innovation and Quality and Chief Medical Officer, CMS, delivered the keynote address at the Tenth Annual State of Personalized Medicine Luncheon.
Dr. Conway outlined his perspective on the state of personalized medicine and where it is headed, noting that we are in an era in which the power of genetics is driving innovation, informing treatments and improving patient outcomes.
As Dr. Conway noted, diagnostics are a challenge as a new market, and CMS is working with FDA to streamline the process further. We want and need diagnostics that enable physicians’ to tailor therapies for individual patients and influence decision making, all resulting in better health outcomes and improved patient care.
Dr. Conway emphasized innovation, noting that we need a system that values innovation and pays for it appropriately. We should cover and pay for technology that may have greater costs in the short-term, but which will result in long-term savings and improved outcomes.
Yet, innovators are facing significant challenges stemming from CMS policies, through the unintended consequences related to coding, in particular. PMC is focused on working with CMS to ease the pressure on innovators, and identifying opportunities to make sure this does not happen again.
A key theme of Dr. Conway’s talk was that of collaboration. PMC will continue to facilitate engagement with CMS, taking up Dr. Conway on his open door policy to ensure that future policies encourage innovation and support continued developments in personalized medicine.
Dr. Conway’s presentation is available at the PMC website.
Tags: CMS, diagnostics, Innovation, personalized medicine, reimbursement
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