Four MACs Just Closed the Nerve Block List
Thursday's coverage database refresh carried a finished LCD nobody sent you: Peripheral Nerve Injections and Procedures for Chronic Pain, identical across CGS, Palmetto, Wellpoint Federal and WPS, notice opened September 10, paying rules effective October 25. Fourteen codes, 43 covered diagnoses, and anything not on the list is non-covered. Plus six MACs quietly deleting the same sentence, a 115-day retroactive coverage expansion, and 6,687 diagnosis codes that stop supporting an injection.
The Medicare Coverage Database export refreshed Thursday at 02:00:12 GMT, carrying inner files stamped the Monday before.
Inside were four local coverage determinations with the same title, the same effective date, and a 10,338-character coverage section that is byte-for-byte identical in all four.
Notice opened September 10. The rules start paying October 25.
That is 45 days, the statutory minimum, and the clock is already running.
"When four contractors publish the same policy on the same morning, who exactly do you appeal to?"
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