A Medical Device Daily

CardioNet (San Diego), a provider of wireless mobile cardiac outpatient monitoring solutions, in partnership with Cardiac Telecom (Greensburg, Pennsylvania), a developer of cardiac outpatient telemetry monitoring, reported formation of the Arrhythmia Detection and Alarm Consortium (ADAAC).

The consortium will address issues related to products cleared by the FDA such as arrhythmia detection and alarm systems, and will initially work with the American Medical Association (AMA; Chicago), American College of Cardiology (ACC; Bethesda, Maryland), the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS; Washington) and other industry groups to obtain CPT coding for its technology.

Previously, the Remote Cardiac Services Provider Group (RCSPG) served to broadly represent the interests of all remote cardiac services manufacturers and providers.

"RCSPG, as a united group of 'service providers,' has been successful in defending reimbursement and fighting cuts initiated by Medicare for Holter, event, and pacemaker monitoring services," said James Sweeney, CEO and chairman of CardioNet. "As the RCSPG is now being asked to expand its scope of activity to such things as writing code descriptions for the ACC/HRS and the AMA and to assist in developing CPT codes, there is a more pressing need for a consortium to represent the best interest of arrhythmia detection and alarm systems specifically."

Cardiac Telecom and CardioNet have been servicing patients with this technology since 1998 and 2002, respectively. They say that they are the only companies allowed to bill Medicare under the HGSA M-60D policy. Recognizing their position as the only firms competent to comment on coverage, coding and reimbursement issues affecting their technology, the two companies joined together to form ADAAC.

CardioNet, a provider of ambulatory, wireless, real-time arrhythmia monitoring, says it has provided services to more than 70,000 patients nationwide. The company has invested more than $84 million and seven years developing its medical devices and 24-hour monitoring service center. Of that amount, it has invested over $40 million developing its proprietary integrated patient-monitoring platform that incorporates a wireless data transmission network, internally developed software, and FDA-cleared algorithms.

On March 13, CardioNet reported completion of its acquisition of PDSHeart (West Palm Beach, Florida) a provider of cardiac monitoring services, first reported in February (Medical Device Daily, Feb. 7, 2007). It provides physician-prescribed remote and ambulatory care monitoring of asymptomatic and symptomatic arrhythmia detection via landline, cellular telephone, and the Internet. PDSHeart's WebHolter is the industry's first Web-based digital Holter monitoring system. PDSHeart provides monitoring services to about 150,000 patients in 49 U.S. states. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Cardiac Telecom is the nation's first single-source provider for cardiac monitoring services covering the patient acuity chain from 24/48 hour Holter to 30-day event monitoring through its outpatient telemetry service Telemetry@Home.