On April 27, 2020, the Italian Ministry of Health shared the invitation of the Italian “Alliance against cancer,” which is intended for all the interested companies that wish to participate in the CAR-T research project.

In March-April, MTRC introduced a number of changes in the educational seminars on reimbursement systems in the Czech Republic and England and released additional modules about reimbursement of in-vitro diagnostic tests in Russia and Turkey.

MTRC continues releasing new seminars on the topics on market access. The seminar discusses key stakeholders, money flow, reimbursement in ambulatory settings for IVD tests, national and regional Benefit Catalogs and the role of HTA for market access of IVD tests.

MTRC has summarized the most important DRG changes in Sweden, which came in force in 2020. This includes five new DRGs and other changes in a grouping logic.

Since January 1, 2020, the nursing staff costs of the hospitals are excluded from the DRG case flat rates and financed in parallel to the DRG case flat rates using a hospital-specific care budget based on the principle of cost coverage.

MTRC has summarized the most important DRG changes in Norway, which came in force in 2020. This includes five new DRGs, one deleted DRG, changes in the titles of four DRGs and other changes.

In April 2020, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published only one new medical technologies guidance (for PneuX to prevent ventilator-associated pneumonia) and two Medtech innovation briefings (for Lifelight First for monitoring vital signs and myCOPD for self-management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).

The revised EBM (German Uniform Evaluation Standard) catalog came into force on April 1, 2020. MTRC has compiled the selection of the most significant changes.

On March 30, 2020, the Danish National Board of Health updated the national clinical guideline on the assessment and treatment of urinary incontinence in women. It is recommended to choose retropubic mid-urethral sling operation for women with involuntary urination who need surgical treatment. It is also provided new data on the effectiveness of supervised pelvic floor training

On behalf of the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA), the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) investigated whether a test of newborns for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) in Germany would make sense. The affected children benefit from early diagnosis as this enables an earlier start of therapy.

Sixty-three new procedure codes and other changes were introduced into the service catalog of the LKF model 2020 for the inpatient and outpatient area in Austria.

The Clinical Coding and Schedule Development (CCSD) group develops and maintains procedural and diagnostics nomenclature for private payers in England. New procedure codes concern pediatric cataract involving lensectomy with or without lens implant, pediatric cataract involving lens aspiration and implant, delivery of a fraction MR Linac adaptive planned radiotherapy, low-level laser therapy for inflammation/pain relief and others. The codes are introduced with a recommended adoption date being the 1st of May 2020. The documents also contain a list of textual changes in codes and unacceptable combinations.