Cardiac pacemaker

On January 29, 2021, the Institute for the Hospital Remuneration System (InEK) has published the List of the requests for innovation funding (NUB) that were submitted by the hospitals in 2020. The medical technologies belonging to the cardiovascular, ENT, eHealth, gastrointestinal, neuromodulation, neurovascular, orthopedic, and other technology groups obtained positive status 1.

On October 30, 2020, the Swiss Federal Statistics Office (UFS) published the 2021 version of the procedure code (CHOP) nomenclature in French and Italian. The version in the German language was published in July 2020. The most important changes regard cardiovascular and peripheral vascular interventions.

In late September 2020, the Austrian version of the DRG system (LKF) 2021 model with the relevant supplementary documents was published in Austria. For 2021, the main changes include the addition of sixteen new procedure codes and the introduction of two new procedure codes for billing in the day-case settings, update of cases flat rates, and adjustments of the cases daily component calculation.

In July 2020, the Austrian Institute for Health Technology Assessment (AIHTA) published updated evaluations of medical procedures previously assessed. Technologies that were revised are leadless pacemaker for right ventricle pacing and extracorporeal cytokine hemadsorption therapy in patients with sepsis or SIRS.

The German Society for Neurology (DGN) has published a new version of the S1 guideline "Syncope." It is valid until January 2025.

The French National Authority for Health (HAS) regularly publishes new decisions about add-on reimbursement for medical devices. The decisions made in July and August 2019 concern various types of devices, including orthopedic, cardiovascular, and blood glucose meters. A total of 29 decisions were made.

The report presents a summary of reimbursement situation for cardiac pacemakers. Both single- and dual-chamber pacemakers are considered. The analysis covers procedure coding, payment mechanism, reimbursement tariffs and policy restrictions in 11 EU countries including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

On February 19, 2019 the new “Catalog of Goods and Services” for the centralized purchasing platform was presented to the regional health authorities by the Minister of Health. This new catalog includes up to 25,000 items, including drugs and health products.