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CMS Slated to Introduce Nearly 400 New CPT Codes in October
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is slated to roll out nearly 400 new current procedural terminology (CPT) codes this coming fall. The upcoming changes include a total of 395 new codes, 25 deletions and 13 revisions. Additionally, hundreds of changes have been made to the tabular instructions for the fiscal year 2024. Read more
Tick-Borne Diseases Are on the Rise
An especially bad tick season in the United States is probably hitting its peak, and experts are stressing the importance of taking personal precautions to protect against rising cases of tick-borne disease. Diagnoses of Lyme disease – a bacterial infection spread by bites from blacklegged ticks, or deer ticks – were 17% higher in the first week of June than they were a year earlier, according to data from athenahealth, a health care technology company. There has been a sharp rise over the past weeks, and trends from the past three years suggest that this year’s seasonal peak is falling just before the Fourth of July holiday. Continue reading
Animal Sedative Present in More Than 1 in 10 Fentanyl Overdose Deaths in the US
The Biden administration recently declared fentanyl laced with xylazine – an animal sedative commonly known as “tranq” – to be an emerging threat facing the United States, and a new analysis of toxicology reports illustrates its sharp rise. In June 2022, xylazine was present in nearly 11% of fentanyl overdose deaths, almost a four-fold increase from January 2019, when the combination was present in about 3% of cases, according to the report. Continue reading
FDA Approves First Alzheimer's Drug to Slow Disease Progression
The US Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to the Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi, the first medicine proven to slow the course of the memory-robbing disease. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services stated that it will now expand coverage of the drug, broadening access for up to an estimated million people with early forms of the disease. The drug was approved only for people with early forms of Alzheimer’s disease, those with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia who have been confirmed to have amyloid plaques in their brains. Read more
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