The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has wrapped up its rulemaking for the outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) for calendar year 2024, bringing some good news and some bad news for the medical device industry. While Philips North America came home with a new technology pass-through (NTPT) payment for its Cavaclear device, Cook Medical Inc., was less fortunate with its Echo Tip device as CMS declared that the Echo Tip did not satisfy the substantial clinical improvement criteria for transitional pass-through payment.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has followed through on an earlier threat to reduce payments for various sorts of radiology services in the physician fee schedule, including those invoked during episodes of cancer care, but Congress may yet intervene.
Privacy considerations have been front and center for U.S. federal government agencies for more than two decades, but several states have jumped into the privacy arena with their own legislative imperatives. While companies in the medical device industry would like to see a less imposing thicket of related enforcement requirements, Nancy Perkins of Arnold & Porter LLP said there is little prospect that Congress will relieve the predicament with anything resembles preemptive legislation.
As a follow-up to the Biden administration’s executive order for artificial intelligence (AI), the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has promulgated a memorandum directing federal government agency use of AI.
There’s nothing scary for Ametek Inc. shareholders in the $1.9 billion acquisition of Paragon Medical Inc. announced on Oct. 31, 2023. The deal moves the industrial technology company solidly into the med-tech space as it picks up Paragon’s portfolio of products in orthopedics, minimally invasive surgery, robotic surgery and drug delivery, and adds an estimated $500 million per year in revenue and “very strong EPS accretion,” Ametek CEO David Zapico said in an investor call on Oct. 31.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released the prospective payment rule for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) for calendar year 2024, and advocates had some luck prompting the agency to boost the base ESRD payment rate. However, Atlanta-based Pain Care Labs Inc. came up short in its transitional add-on payment application for the Buzzy Pro for relief of puncture wound site pain because, according to CMS, the device does not represent a substantial improvement over currently available remedies.
Olympus Medical Corp. instituted a class I recall of its UHI-4 high flow insufflation device due to reports that the device may over-inflate and potentially create embolisms. The recall affects more than 3,100 units distributed in the U.S. between May 2012 and August 2023, all of which should not be used until the company resolves the problem.
Pulkit Grover, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, reported a new approach for electrode placement that explicitly exploits the thresholding phenomenon of neurons to achieve significant gains in focal neural stimulation.
The Biden administration has issued an executive order (EO) for artificial intelligence (AI), which addresses not only national security considerations, but public health considerations as well.
Advocates of expanded use of telehealth in the U.S. may believe they have an unfairly high evidentiary bar to meet to bring payers on board, but that evidentiary requirement just received support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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