WALTHAM, Mass., Nov. 7, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BG Medicine, Inc. (Nasdaq:BGMD), a company focused on the development and commercialization of novel cardiovascular diagnostics, announced today that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), in the Final Determination for the Medicare Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule for 2013, assigned a payment rate for the BGM Galectin-3® test under new analyte-specific Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) code 82777 effective January 1, 2013. The CMS Final Determination decision comes in response to BG Medicine’s request for an analyte-specific CPT code and recommendation that CMS assign a higher payment rate for the new code. CMS did not accept the recommendation for a higher payment rate, however, the payment rate will be crosswalked to the code under which the test is currently paid. The BGM Galectin-3 test is a novel test, which is cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as an aid in assessing the prognosis of patients with chronic heart failure.
