Medicare Will Cover CT Lung Cancer Screening
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on February 5, 2015, that CT lung cancer screening will be a covered service. This long awaited decision followed the preliminary announcement in November 2014. After a period of comment, the coverage ages were expanded to include patients 55-77 years old. The process mandates maintenance of a registry, smoking cessation counseling, and physician orders for each of the elements rather than patient self-referral.
After having offered a full lung cancer screening program at essentially a reduced rate out of pocket expense for many years in the early2000’s, it is nice to see that our efforts and findings are now recognized to the level that even The CME has finally agreed to cover the costs.