Terumo Aortic today announced what it describes as a “significant policy milestone” with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) establishing a new Medicare Severity Diagnosis-Related Group (MS-DRG), MS-DRG 209, for complex aortic arch procedures.
A company press release details that this change will take effect on Oct. 1, 2025, and represents an advancement for hospitals treating patients with the Thoraflex Hybrid device in frozen elephant trunk (FET) procedures.
For the last three years, hospitals using the Thoraflex Hybrid device have benefitted from a New Technology Add-On Payment (NTAP), first granted by CMS in 2021, to help offset the high costs of performing complex open aortic procedures. Terumo Aortic petitioned CMS for a permanent reimbursement framework that fully recognizes the real-world costs of developing and delivering this care.
Following CMS’s own analysis of Medicare claims data, they concluded that a new DRG was needed to accurately reflect the resource demands and clinical complexity of these hybrid surgical-endovascular procedures.
