On February 15, 2018, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a Decision Memo outlining revisions to its 2005 National Coverage Determination (NCD) for Implantable Automatic Defibrillators (ICDs) . The updated NCD includes changes to the covered indications for ICDs, new patient criteria and exceptions to waiting periods for symptomatic patients with certain histories before an ICD will be considered a covered device by Medicare. The final updates follow CMS’ review of comments received following its release of a Proposed Decision Memorandum in November 2017. The Decision Memo includes the comments received and CMS’ responses to such comments, as well as detailed summaries of the evidence considered by CMS in drafting the updated NCD.
This post was co-authored by Chelsea Sousa, legal intern at Robinson+Cole. Chelsea is not yet admitted to practice law.