Reimbursement

The French National Authority for Health (HAS) regularly publishes new decisions about add-on reimbursement for medical devices. The decisions made in September 2019 concern various types of devices, including orthopedic, cardiovascular devices, and hearing aids. A total of eighteen decisions were made.

The insurance company AOK Saxony-Anhalt concluded that patients are much less frequently prescribed an antibiotic after the examination via a rapid test for a bacterial cause of the infection. In more than 40% of the tested patients, the doctors waived the antibiotics prescription.

New material codes for extraction catheters were added to the List of reimbursable devices of the Belgian National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance (INAMI-RIZIV) in September 2019.

The fee negotiations for the coming year are over - the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV) and the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds (GKV-Spitzenverband) agreed on an increase in the monetary conversion factor for all medical and psychotherapeutic services in the amount of 1.52 percent. GKV-Spitzenverband and KBV have also agreed to sponsor the video consultations.

After a long time since the introduction of Healthcare Implementation Communique (SUT) for the first time (2007), the Reimbursement Commission made important changes to the SUT. The main changes relate to higher reimbursement fees for medical devices (reimbursement fees increased depending on the category from 5% to 100%).

In order to diagnose pre-eclampsia in pregnancy, two new markers were included in the EBM catalog in early October 2019. The statutory health insurances then will take over the costs for the determination of the PIGF concentration and the sFlt-1 / PIGF quotient. In addition, another tumor marker for ovarian cancer will be included in the EBM.

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.

At the beginning of August 2019, the Dutch Healthcare Institute (Zorginstituut Nederland, ZIN) has published an Overview of the applications of healthcare products and activities for conditional entry into the Basic Insurance Package. Two applications for heated intraperitoneal chemotherapy in ovarian cancer and GAG therapy in bladder pain syndrome were considered.

The Clinical Coding and Schedule Development (CCSD) group develop and maintains procedural and diagnostics nomenclature for private payers in England. New procedure codes concern hip replacement, endoscopic ablation, multiple arthroscopic operations on the ankle, collagen paste for closing an anal fistula and diagnostic codes for tests for next generations sequencing molecular intelligence, and others. The codes are introduced with a recommended adoption date being the 1st of November 2019. The documents also contain a list of textual changes in codes, inactivated codes, and an updated list of unacceptable combinations of codes.

New material codes for hearing aids were added to the List of reimbursable devices of the Belgian National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance (INAMI-RIZIV) in August 2019.

Domestic use of motor-driven moving splints (continuous passive motion, CPM) after interventions at the knee or shoulder joint remains covered by statutory health insurance. This has been determined by the G-BA (the Federal Joint Committee).

The test for severe combined immunodeficiencies (SCID) is part of neonatal screening since July 1, 2019, in Germany. At the beginning of July 2019, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) has stated that health care should offer screening for the severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) as approximately two or three children per each year can be diagnosed and treated for the fatal disease with the test available.