The PLA subcommittee will meet privately on the evenings of January 29 and 30 and, if you submitted a code, they ask applicants to be available by phone in case the committee has questions for them.
In most quarters, the CPT Editorial Panel as a whole convenes very briefly by teleconference to confirm the PLA codes as finalized by the PLA committee. However, this quarter, that editorial board action is folded into the next AMA CPT meeting, which is February 7-8-9 in Phoenix.
The next PLA deadline for applications will be April 3, then July 11.
See The Names of New Proposed PLA Codes
Read all of the current crop of applicants online at AMA, here. This form shows the submitted names; some of which conform to the ultimate PLA name rules and some don't. The committee at AMA will re-write lengthy or non-conforming code names.
Among the 23 applications, there's one for the Accelerate Pheno Test (agenda item 100241). Accelerate Diagnostics has a market cap of about $900M, although share price is down from $28 to $16 over the past year.
There are also several proposed PLA codes for FilmArray (BioFire).
Hints for PLA Code Application
The committee prefers concise code descriptors closely matched to the AMA model formats provided (in the application process). The committee will rewrite an overly detailed Patient Vignette or Procedure Description to be concise (e.g. two sentences each).
Busy July 2019 Crosswalk Meeting at CMS
By my count, before this, there were already 22 new PLA codes (created since August 2018) entering the July 2019 CMS Crosswalk meeting, and this round in February 2019 will bring that number over 40. Since the future codes from the April 2019 application will be completed by June, there could be over 50, even over 60, new PLA codes for CMS review in July 2019.
