Health care providers will soon be able to bill Medicare for implantable cardioverter defibrillators in more circumstances. But the extent of the ICD coverage expansion is not as broad as many had hoped. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced June 6 that it will be adding the following two indications to Medicare coverage:
Those types of cases represent only a portion of patients studied in the Multicenter Auto matic Defibrillator Implantation Trial II. Device manufacturers Guidant Corp. and Medtronic Inc. had hoped CMS would agree to cover a much larger population.