TAG:
Medicare Administrative Contractor
Genetic Testing Lab Finds Payers Respond To Education on Test Utility
CEO SUMMARY: In recent years, insurers have raised the bar and become much tougher when making coverage and reimbursement decisions for molecular assays, genomic, and genetic tests. Yet several lab testing companies are having good success at demonstrating the validity and clinical utilit…
Palmetto GBA Issues Guidance On Billing NGS Test Panels
CEO SUMMARY: Across the lab industry, next generation sequencing is taking hold as an effective and efficient testing platform. In response, payers are developing coding and payment policies that may affect the finances of clinical labs. Last month, Palmetto GBA, a Medicare contractor, is…
Payers Using Two Approaches To Price Molecular, Genetic Tests
PRIVATE PAYERS AND MEDICARE contractors are taking divergent approaches to establishing coverage policies and setting prices for molecular and genetic tests. That’s what Kuo Bianchini Tong, MS, CEO of Quorum Consulting Inc., sees happening. “One approach seeks to recognize the c…
Payers Using Two Approaches To Price Molecular and Genetic Tests
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This analysis, unique to THE DARK REPORT, contrasts the decision of Palmetto GBA to distinguish between “hotspot” tumor panels (meaning those targeting 5 to 50 genes and 51 or more genes) versus “sequencing” tumor panels in coding and pricing NGS test panels, wi…
New Company Tracks Details and Prices For 60,000 Molecular and Genetic Tests
CEO SUMMARY: Advances in the speed, accuracy, and cost of next-generation gene sequencing making it possible for clinical labs to create thousands of new tests. How many new tests? NextGxDx, an information technology company, says the nation’s clinical laboratories are introducing new m…
New ADLT Payment Rate May Force Lab to Close
CEO SUMMARY: Four Medicare Administrative Contractors currently pay $2,821 for CareDx’s AlloMap test. But under the proposal that CMS issued last month to overhaul the clinical lab fee schedule, CareDx would get only $644. Such a steep price cut would put the lab out of business because…
Labs React with Criticism to Proposed ADLT Rule
CEO SUMMARY: Some in the lab industry had high hopes that passage of the Protecting Access to Medicare Act (PAMA) last year would favorably resolve a number of important issues. However, those hopes were dashed following the September 25 release by CMS of a proposed rule setting out how i…
Medicare Ends Coverage for Some Pharmacogenomic Testing
WHAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT giveth with one hand, it will often taketh away with the other hand. It might be argued that this is true of federal support of pharmacogenomic testing — particularly for those tests clinical labor…
Are Clinical Labs and MACs Ready to Implement ICD-10?
ARE CLINICAL LABORATORIES and pathology groups prepared for ICD-10? Or, perhaps a better question to ask is this: Are Medicare administrative contractors prepared to switch to ICD-10 on October 1? A recent survey of clinical laboratories and pathology groups by McKesson Corporation showed th…
Medicare Ends Coverage for Genetic Drug-Sensitivity Tests
CEO SUMMARY: Medicare’s decision to cease covering many pharmacogenomic tests puts as many as 19 million Americans who have genetic variations affecting their response to medications at risk. These medications are commonly prescribed for patients with cardiovascular disease, pain…
CURRENT ISSUE
Volume XXXI, No. 6 – April 29, 2024
Laboratory managers will want to note that The Dark Report itself was targeted by the fraudsters who hit Change Health in a cyberattack. Also, one lab has some innovative methods of combatting the chronic staffing shortage, including hiring college graduates and students.
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