medical devices, Surgery, transplants

Medicare Will Cover Abiomed Heart

Wade Roush 5/2/08

Abiomed of Danvers, MA, said today that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has decided to reimburse hospitals that give patients Abiomed’s AbioCor artificial heart, reversing a 22-year-old policy against Medicare coverage for heart replacement surgery. The self-contained, fully-implantable AbioCor unit, which has no infection-prone tubes or wires that pierce the skin, is designed to extend the lives of patients dying from heart failure, and was approved for the second time by the Food and Drug Administration in January.