Novel Cancer Drug Gets Stymied by Medicare Rigid Billing System
- Medicare doesn’t have billing code for complex new therapy
- Annual code updates take ‘too long’ for patients, doctors
This article is for subscribers only.
A U.S. government reimbursement system that doesn’t fully cover the costs for Gilead Sciences Inc.’s complex blood cancer therapy is partly to blame for the slow uptake of the novel life-saving treatment, according to doctors who are trying to treat patients.
Only a handful of patients have received the therapy, Yescarta, two months after its approval, while waiting lists have risen to the hundreds at the 15 cancer centers authorized to administer the treatment in the U.S., Bloomberg News reported Thursday.