JAMA Publishes Rapid Op Ed on CMS NGS NCD (Kathryn Phillips, UCSF)

Noted health economist and expert on precision medicine policy, Kathryn Phillips of UCSF, has published a rapid op-ed in JAMA on the March 2018 Medicare National Coverage Determination for uses of next generation sequencing testing in cancer.

The op ed is open access and online here.

Phillips notes the NCD provides coverage for NGS tests in all Medicare patients with advanced cancer.  However, it doesn't yet come with a "national health policy" for where we are going.  The impact on Medicaid populations or on commercial populations is unknown and remains to be developed.   She notes that a number of studies have asserting that panel NGS testing is "not cost effective," and that the coverage has been rapidly expanded across solid tumors with no kind of tracking or information collection such as could occur under coverage with evidence development.

Phillips will give a talk on the topic at Stanford on April 27.

Phillips directs a longstanding NIH-funded precision medicine policy program at UCSF, TRANSPERS, here.