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Mazor Surgical Technologies Ltd. announces that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have included new ICD-9-CM codes for robotic assisted surgery, enabling in-patient medical facilities to report the use of robotics of the sort the Company produces for surgical procedures in the United States.
The new codes which cover open, percutaneous, endoscopic, laparoscopic and thoracoscopic procedures, effective October 1, 2008, are a first necessary step to enable hospitals and insurance providers to collect data for clinical and economic analysis. Previous attempts to secure new robotic assisted codes had been unsuccessful, while this effort succeeded through recognition that robotics are making a difference in OR procedures.
The new codes allow hospitals, private medical insurance providers and CMS to track the effectiveness and the significance of the use of surgical robotics.
Examples of data that can be analyzed with these codes are: the duration of the hospitalization stay, the amount of pain medication, the duration of the operation, and total costs compared to non-robotic assisted surgeries.
As payers collect data on robotic assisted surgeries they can then determine the appropriate payment for these procedures. In addition, as clinical outcome data becomes available, payers will use this information as a basis for coverage policy decisions. If payers see better clinical outcomes with robotic assisted surgery, they could issue coverage decisions in favor of these procedures over non-robotic assisted procedures.
To the best of the Company’s knowledge and relying on their previous experience, the decisions regarding the extent of reimbursement for certain medical procedures are affected by different factors including location (in different states/cities,), treatment center type (in-patient, out-patient, ASC), clinical efficacy and value of the technology and procedures.
The company believes that the issuance of these new codes, coverage policies and payment in the United States are important future aspects of its business model for the significance of the securities law of 1968, which are the result of different factors not under control of the Company.
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