The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has initiated a new national coverage analysis for screening for hepatitis C virus (HCV) in adults. CMS will accept comments until Oct. 5, 2013, and expects to make a decision by June 3, 2014. The decision to consider coverage for HCV screening likely is the result of a June 25, 2013, statement by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which recommends screening for HCV in persons at high-risk for infection and a one-time screening for adults born between 1945 and 1965. HCV is the most common chronic bloodborne pathogen in the United States and a leading cause of complications from chronic liver disease. The prevalence of the anti-HCV antibody in the country is approximately 1.6 percent in noninstitutionalized persons. According to data from 1999 to 2008, about three-fourths of patients in the United States living with HCV infection were born between 1945 and 1965, with a peak prevalence of 4.3 percent in persons aged 40 to 49 years old from 1999 to 2002. The most important risk factor for HCV infection is past or current injection drug use. The National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable, a coalition of health groups and medical providers, this […]
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has initiated a new national coverage analysis for screening for hepatitis C virus (HCV) in adults. CMS will accept comments until Oct. 5, 2013, and expects to make a decision by June 3, 2014.
The decision to consider coverage for HCV screening likely is the result of a June 25, 2013, statement by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which recommends screening for HCV in persons at high-risk for infection and a one-time screening for adults born between 1945 and 1965.
HCV is the most common chronic bloodborne pathogen in the United States and a leading cause of complications from chronic liver disease. The prevalence of the anti-HCV antibody in the country is approximately 1.6 percent in noninstitutionalized persons. According to data from 1999 to 2008, about three-fourths of patients in the United States living with HCV infection were born between 1945 and 1965, with a peak prevalence of 4.3 percent in persons aged 40 to 49 years old from 1999 to 2002. The most important risk factor for HCV infection is past or current injection drug use.
The National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable, a coalition of health groups and medical providers, this spring urged CMS to offer HCV screenings as part of a patients’ first Medicare exam. With baby boomers representing about 75 percent of the U.S. cases of HCV, screening for the virus could save more than 100,000 lives, the coalition said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended last year that every baby boomer get tested for HCV, which many people carry without knowing it. John Ward, M.D., head of CDC’s viral hepatitis division, said many older people who injected drugs in their youth have unknowingly carried hepatitis C for decades.
“We had an epidemic of hepatitis C transmission in the ’70s and ’80s, and we’re now seeing an epidemic of hepatitis C disease,” he told National Public Radio last August.
There are a number of Food and Drug Administration-approved HCV tests, including the OraQuick HCV Rapid Antibody Test (OraSure Technologies), which is a rapid assay that received a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments waiver in 2011. The waiver permits the use of the assay in nontraditional settings, such as physician offices, hospital emergency departments, health department clinical, and other freestanding counseling and testing sites.
