The U.S. CMS had the usual mix of good news and bad news in its hospital outpatient final rule for calendar year 2023, which served up a plate of bad news for Brainscope Inc. and Elucent Medical Inc., which will enjoy no new technology pass-through (NTPT) payments in the coming year for their applications. Conversely, Carlsmed Inc. and Microtransponder Inc. both came out of the annual NTPT scrum with wins, thus ensuring they’ll be able to more rapidly recapture their med tech investments.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that it has arrived at a settlement of $45 million with Boca Raton, Fla.-based Modernizing Medicine Inc., an electronic health record (EHR) vendor that was accused of inducing referrals to a clinical lab for pathology services. The department stated that this settlement was the fourth such action against EHR vendors and is part of a concerted DOJ effort to “root out fraud” in the field, a signal that more enforcement against these companies is in the works.

The U.S. CMS has finalized the physician fee rule for calendar year 2023, a document that imposes an across-the-board pay cut of approximately 4.5% for physician Medicare services. However, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) blasted the final rule’s failure to provide what they believe are appropriate rates for cardiac ablation services, a position backed by two med-tech trade associations in their comments to the docket for the draft rule.

Shortages of medical devices were not particularly topical before the COVID-19 pandemic, but they have dotted the landscape in the past three years despite the U.S. FDA’s best efforts to manage such issues. The agency recently announced that tracheostomy tubes are now among the device types that are in a state of shortage, a problem created by a paucity of the raw materials used to manufacture these items.

The U.S. CMS has peeled back a proposed 4.2% rate cut in the home health payment draft rule for calendar year 2023, replacing it instead with a 0.7% increase in overall payments for home health services, a category that affects sales of durable medical equipment and home infusion therapy items. That change was insufficient to mollify the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC), which argued that the final rule will nonetheless severely hit home care providers and leaves NAHC with no choice but to take its concerns to Capitol Hill.

Despite a busy September, U.S. FDA approvals and global regulatory news fell in October to the lowest point this year. So far in 2022, the FDA has approved 127 drugs and biologics, including supplemental filings. This is 25% less than each of the last two years, which had 170 approvals in 2021 and 169 approvals in 2020 through the end of October. The last time approvals were lower than this year was 2016 when there were 121.