Seven Osteomyelitis Codes Didn't Make Medicare's Oxygen List
CMS issued the April 2027 NCD coding update this morning, three weeks after the codes inside it took effect. Four coverage policies wait until April 5 for edits dated October 1, the hyperbaric oxygen list comes back seven codes short and stays that way, and the spreadsheet that would show you the rest is a dead link.
Transmittal 14022 posted this morning, stamped October 23, 2026, and it tells every A/B MAC to install a set of diagnosis codes on April 5, 2027.
Those codes took effect October 1. Twenty-two days ago.
CR 14653 is the April 2027 edition of the quarterly NCD coding maintenance update, and it opens with the sentence all of them open with: "No policy is being changed as a result of these updates."
Six national coverage determinations, seven business requirements, and section II of the transmittal reads N/A because no manual section gets revised. Routine, by its own account.
We ran the January edition of this same instrument on August 11 ("How a Maintenance Update Reopens Three Years of Claims"), where the finding was that the stamped effective date on one of these tells you nothing, because the edits inside carry their own dates and those dates run backwards. That still holds. What is new this quarter is how far backwards, which four coverage policies are sitting in the gap, and one covered list that comes back seven codes short and stays that way.
"If the code is valid and the diagnosis is covered, whose problem is it that the edit table hasn't heard?"
Every bar in the chart below is a coding requirement that was already operative before anybody was told to install it, across all three change requests CMS currently has in flight. The two in accent are the ones this morning created.
Requirement 14653.7 settles the question in one sentence: "Contractors shall not search for any claims, but shall adjust claims brought to their attention."
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