RedPath Integrated Pathology Awarded Medicare Reimbursement Coverage for PathFinderTG®
Approval provides Medicare beneficiaries with access to highly-definitive cancer testing.
Pittsburgh (Vocus) June 27, 2007
RedPath Integrated Pathology, Inc. ("RedPath") announced today that its genomic-based cancer diagnostic test, PathFinderTG®, has been approved by Highmark Medicare Services for reimbursement coverage.
"The PathFinderTG test helps to resolve even the most difficult cancer diagnoses, allowing for clarity in indeterminate, equivocal, suspicious and non-diagnostic specimens in a wide variety of cancer types," said Mary Del Brady, president and CEO of RedPath. "The reimbursement approval means that this powerful diagnostic tool can now be readily available to Medicare beneficiaries."
Currently, PathFinderTG is offered in more than half of the major cancer centers in the United States, as well as in other hospital and outpatient settings. For patients with conditions that have been difficult to diagnose, PathFinderTG provides a personalized, definitive answer, ending the cycles of traditional testing and retesting, and thereby preventing potentially inappropriate treatments and life-threatening delays.
"Medicare reimbursement provides tremendous validation of the efficacy of the PathFinderTG testing platform and the impact it can have on patient management and individualized treatment. PathFinderTG succeeds where traditional diagnostic modalities are unable to make a patient-specific determination," said Brady. "It is a tool that provides additional diagnostic information for more effective patient management decisions and more efficient use of healthcare resources."
A recent study of pancreatic patients at the University of Michigan underscored the cost-saving potential of the test. It demonstrated that definitive diagnostic results through use of PathFinderTG reduced the number of pancreatectomies on benign conditions by 34 percent. The study came on the heels of two separate abstracts indicating that post-operatively, 70 to 78 percent of pancreatectomies were performed unnecessarily for benign conditions.
According to the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), while diagnostics comprise less than 5 percent of hospital costs and about 1.6 percent of all Medicare costs, their findings influence as much as 60 to 70 percent of healthcare decision-making. As a genomic-based test, PathFinderTG reveals definitive information contained within the cells of an individual specimen to dramatically improve the quality of patient care and use of resources. Pathologists and clinicians can minimize or eliminate ambiguity in diagnoses for faster and completely personalized courses of therapy.
About RedPath Integrated Pathology, Inc.
Founded in 2004, RedPath Integrated Pathology is one of a growing class of diagnostic companies that are commercializing genomic-based technologies. RedPath's patented PathFinderTG® test brings a dynamic, complementary new tool to the traditional pathology process, yielding comprehensive, personalized, objective and definitive diagnostic results for patients.
RedPath's commercial laboratory is CLIA certified and CAP accredited and provides complex cancer diagnostic testing for pathologists, oncologists and clinicians. Its patented molecular-based analysis, PathFinderTG, offers clinicians and pathologists the power of genomics for early and extraordinarily accurate cancer diagnosis across a wide variety of specialty types. Relevant case studies and more information can be found at: www. redpathip. com
Mary Del Brady
Phone: 412-231-3600
Or: 800-495-9885
Mdb(@)redpathip. com
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