Government
Medicare expands ICD coverage
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Feb. 7, 2005
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced plans to lift the delay in its expansion of Medicare coverage for implantable cardioverter defibrillators.
The move will increase the total number of beneficiaries eligible for ICD coverage by about a third, to 500,000. Of the newly eligible seniors, Medicare officials expect at least 25,000 to take advantage of the benefit in the first year. The projected federal cost of outfitting all seniors who are expected to get ICDs is about $3 billion.
Physicians who prescribe the devices for the new class of Medicare patients must enter outcomes data on the recipients in a national registry aimed at determining how well the treatments work.
CMS delayed its decision last December, citing the fact that a National Institutes of Health study on ICDs and sudden cardiac death had not yet been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. The results of the investigation appeared in the Jan. 20 New England Journal of Medicine.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2005/02/07/gvbf0207.htm.
