WASHINGTON, April 27 (UPI) -- Medicare patients will have access to positron emission tomography scans for more cancers beginning May 8.
As part of a new pilot project, facilities can choose to participate in the National Oncological PET Registry, making them eligible to receive Medicare reimbursement for scans for brain, cervical, small cell lung, pancreatic, testicular and ovarian and other cancers, for patients that are also part of the registry.
Previously, Medicare only covered the scans for several common types of cancer.
PET is a diagnostic imaging procedure that can differentiate cancer from normal tissue and may add important information beyond conventional imaging studies in diagnosing and staging cancer and in monitoring a patient's progress during treatment.
Thus far, about 600 facilities have joined the program.
Obtaining the expanded Medicare PET coverage for a patient requires that the patient's referring physician complete a short questionnaire before and another after the scan, which the PET facility will submit electronically to the project database.
In addition to expanding coverage for Medicare beneficiaries, the project will gather data for a database that will be used to improve care for relatively rare cancers, Barry Siegel, an oncologist and co-chairman of the NOPR Working Group, told United Press International.
The data will enable researchers to collect better data on rare cancers, and Medicare will gain the benefit of cost and outcome data, he said.
"We'll be gathering data to look at the impact of PET on what physicians decide to do to treat patients," Siegel said.
