Government Relations
GR News
April 16, 2008
CMS Reconsiders Coverage for NOPR — Deadline May 10th
The reconsideration of the PET National Coverage Decision (NCD) (CAG-00181R) by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is now open for public comment. In response to this opening, the SNM has drafted the attached educational materials to assist you (or your referring physicians) when submitting substantive public comments to CMS.
We encourage providers and, more importantly, your referring physicians to provide input to CMS during this critical time. Your referring physicians may not be aware of this important comment period opening; therefore, we strongly encourage you to bring this comment period to their attention and encourage them to provide comments. CMS is interested in hearing from all interested parties during this open comment period.
The public comment period will be open now through Saturday May 10, 2008.
- Download the Coverage Education Document for PET facilities
- Download the Coverage Education Document for Referring Physicians
- Download the SNM comment to CMS
Related Items
- The National Oncologic PET Registry (NOPR) recently published its initial results indicating that clinicians changed the intended care of more than one in three cancer patients as the result of FDG-PET scan findings. These findings were published on-line on March 24 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) (see http://jco.ascopubs.org/cgi/reprint/JCO.2007.14.5631v1 and the accompanying editorial at http://jco.ascopubs.org/cgi/reprint/JCO.2007.15.6935v1).
- On March 25, The NOPR Working Group submitted a formal request to the Centers for CMS, asking that it reconsider the current National Coverage Decision on FDG-PET and to end the data collection requirements for diagnosis, staging and restaging for all cancers. On April 10, CMS initiated its review of this request (see https://www.cms.hhs.gov/mcd/viewtrackingsheet.asp?from2=viewtrackingsheet.asp&id=218&).
- At this time, CMS is soliciting comments on NOPR's request. The public comment period will be open for 30 days, until May 10 2008. Comments can be submitted directly on-line via the CMS web site.
- NOPR Study Released: Confirms FDG-PET Has Major Impact on Management of Cancer Patient Care