|
Seven medical imaging societies have written a joint letter asking the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide coverage for two FDG PET scans for initial patient treatment evaluation, as opposed to the one scan CMS now covers.
Information provided by PET was found to affect how clinicians manage cancer patients’ care regardless of the cancer type and reason for ordering the imaging scan, according to results from the National Oncologic PET Registry (NOPR), published online Nov. 7 in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
In response to a data collection effort by the National Oncologic PET Registry (NOPR) showing that PET scans can help improve cancer patient survival, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) should consider the expansion of coverage of PET for all types of cancer, according to the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM) and other nonprofit medical associations.
|
Physicians participating in the National Oncologic PET Registry (NOPR) reported changing the treatment plan for 43.1 percent of their patients undergoing cancer treatment as the result of information gained from a PET scan, according to a study published online Nov. 17 in Cancer.
Written by Sarah Lamberti
As personalized medicine attempts to revolutionize healthcare, giving patients access to tailored medical care, PET/CT is emerging with the promise of personalized therapies for oncology, including women’s cancers to provide the right patient with the right treatment at the right time.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has been asked
by representatives from the National Oncologic PET Registry to
remove the current prospective data collection requirements as required
for certain cancers in Section 220.6 of the national coverage
determination manual for PET reimbursements.
|
RSS 
The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.