Not Enough Data on Prostate Cancer Treatments Says CMS

This is a follow-up to the post of just a couple days ago about CMS’ gathered advisory panel’s meeting to discuss RadOnc prostate cancer treatments and their effectiveness.  Essentially, the panel told CMS that there just isn’t enough data to determine it at this time.

Not only is there not enough clinical data on the safety of focused radiation treatments but there isn’t enough long-term patient-tracking or comparative effectiveness research.  Overall, only a few studies have been done to evaluate these treatments’ outcomes on prostate cancer.

As this panel was convened to advise CMS on appropriateness of covering such treatments, officials will be considering the results.  At this point, there will be no change to nation-wide coverage, which is currently allowed and disallowed by the individual Medicare regions.  Reuters has the whole story at this link: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63K5P720100421.