CMS pro­pos­es new cov­er­age pol­i­cy for Alzheimer's-re­lat­ed PET scans

The Cen­ters for Medicare and Med­ic­aid Ser­vices pro­posed changes on Mon­day to its cur­rent cov­er­age pol­i­cy that could ex­pand ac­cess to PET scans used to de­tect a sticky plaque linked to Alzheimer’s dis­ease.

CMS rec­om­mend­ed toss­ing its na­tion­al cov­er­age de­ter­mi­na­tion for PET be­ta amy­loid imag­ing, which was es­tab­lished in 2013 and cur­rent­ly lim­its cov­er­age to one scan per pa­tient in the clin­i­cal tri­al set­ting. The pro­posed changes would end the cov­er­age re­quire­ment for ev­i­dence de­vel­op­ment and al­low fu­ture cov­er­age de­ci­sions to be made by Medicare Ad­min­is­tra­tive Con­trac­tors.

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