The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will reimburse sites participating in the National Oncologic Positron Emission Tomography Registry (NOPR) for F-18 sodium fluoride (NaF) PET scans, beginning February 7.
NOPR's goal is to assess the effect of NaF-PET on how physicians manage the care of their Medicare patients. The project also will try to determine if NaF-PET results in physicians changing patient care to more appropriate palliative or curative care.
Previous research has found that NaF-PET has a higher diagnostic accuracy than conventional bone scans with technetium-99m and can reduce scan times as much as one hour for NaF-PET and three to four hours for a bone scan.
The scans, however, have not been utilized to a greater degree due to the lack of reimbursement.
Related Reading
NOPR: PET changes care of more than a third of cancer patients, October 6, 2008
NOPR asks CMS to expand FDG-PET coverage, April 11, 2008
NOPR study: PET influences cancer care, March 25, 2008
NOPR releases preliminary results of PET treatment strategies, January 11, 2008
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