News You Can Use:
Catch These Important MRA and Tobacco Cessation Announcements
Published on Tue Aug 24, 2010
See whether tobacco-related illnesses are still a 99406 must.Coverage changes are in the works at Medicare. Here's what's coming down the pike for MRA and tobacco cessation services. Mix and Match MRI and MRA Coverage Sometimes one coverage change leads to another.When CMS decided to remove the phrase "blood flow measurement" from MRI's Nationally Noncovered Indications at 220.2(C)(2) of the National Coverage Determinations (NCD) Manual, the agency announced a decision to review evidence on non-covered indications for magnetic resonance angiography (MRA), too.Result: CMS recently announced that local Medicare contractors will be the ones to decide whether to cover MRA services not specifically designated as nationally covered or non-covered.In short, the decision states that CMS will merge the NCDs for MRI and MRA. And as part of the merging, CMS will maintain existing national coverage but will eliminate non-coverage language for MRA.For practices that perform imaging, "the change in the national [...]
