RESTON, Va. -- The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has formally approved the National Oncologic PET Registry project that will significantly expand Medicare's coverage for PET imaging. Since CMS announced its intent to support a PET registry in January 2005, SNM representatives have assisted in developing NOPR, a national, Internet-based, audited data repository designed to gather PET data from beneficiaries and providers and to report on that data.

"The launching of this registry is a milestone for cancer patients," said SNM President Peter S. Conti, M.D., Ph.D., professor of radiology, clinical pharmacy and biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. "SNM continues to work collaboratively with our colleagues from different associations to advance patient care," noted Conti, who as SNM president represents more than 16,000 physician, technologist and scientist members. "PET advances will continue to provide new dimensions in imaging cancer as the medical community integrates advances made in molecular and cellular biology, chemistry, physics, pharmacology, engineering and computer sciences," added the director of the PET Imaging Science Center at USC's Keck School of Medicine.

"Working closely with NOPR is another example of CMS collaborating with the physician community to enhance the availability of innovative treatments and improve patient care," said Mark McClellan, CMS administrator.
The project launch, expected in the coming weeks, marks the first time CMS will extend procedure-specific coverage for cases in which patient data is entered into a registry. For PET indications currently not covered for payment including--but not limited to--brain, cervical, small cell lung, pancreatic, ovarian and testicular cancers, referring physicians will complete short surveys prior to and following the PET scans. PET facilities will submit these surveys electronically to the NOPR database. With data analysis support from the ACRIN Biostatistics Center at Brown University, NOPR investigators will assess the effect of PET on referring physicians' plans of intended patient management across a wide spectrum of cancer indications and report their findings to CMS.

SNM members collaborated with representatives of the Academy of Molecular Imaging, the project's sponsor; the American College of Radiology and the American College of Radiology Imaging Network, the project's managers; and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. "NOPR affords oncologists and nuclear medicine physicians a unique opportunity to make PET available to Medicare beneficiaries and to improve our understanding of the role of PET in oncology practice," said SNM member Barry Siegel, M.D., who is also an ACRIN researcher and co-chair of the NOPR Working Group.

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