Delay in CMS’s Policy for Reimbursement in Medical Device Inventions

Medical device guidelines can frequently be a subtle balancing act. On the first side, you must be totally reliable if you want to ensure if the devices designed are safe for use or not. If the passing process is hurried, you may compromise the very people that the devices are manufacture to treat. However, protracted approval timelines and unreasonably constricted controls can be risky in their own right. Through halting approval, one might be grudging patients of a life-altering invention.

The decision over a rule concerning this matter by Medicare Coverage of Innovative Technologies is yet again likely to be delayed. This rule is basically designed to come into effect in March 2021, was later on postponed till May, and is yet again being delayed till December. The policy would have been used by Healthcare recipients to use ‘ground-breaking’ medical devices i.e., latest technologies that have been approved FDA’s program for breakthrough devices. Critics have disclosed their worries on the suitability of these devices’ on Medicare patients that are aged above 65 or are going through a chronic disease.

What is the goal of the rule?

At the time of the device launch, the device has to go through a number of testing processes and get dozens of approvals, out of which FDA approval is considered being primary. In order to speed up the approval procedure, in 2016, the FDA began its Breakthrough Devices Program. The latest MCI policy that was launched by CMS’s in 2020 and was finalized in January 2021 would state that breakthrough device manufacturers may get CMS’s reimbursement on the very same day they got FDA market authorization.

Innovation versus guideline

The approval from FDA doesn’t solely mean that the devices are 100% safe to be used on patients. While the current NTAP rule offers CMS’s and opportunity to study the proof, the MCIT rule does not offer that mark of flexibility.