CMS designated Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as a qualified provider-led entity, which allows the organization to develop diagnostic imaging criteria for emergency departments and ambulatory facilities.
Johns Hopkins will create guidelines that meet the requirements of the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 for when physicians order imaging tests such as CT scans, MRI scans and nuclear imaging. The university is one of 22 U.S. organizations that have been approved by CMS to develop the criteria.
The criteria that Johns Hopkins will develop will address eight clinical priority areas: chest pain, pulmonary embolism, neck pain, low back pain, shoulder pain, hip pain, lung cancer and headache. The organization anticipates their release of the criteria by January 2020, ahead of CMS' requirement that all healthcare professionals must consult clinical decision support tools when ordering advanced diagnostic imaging tests for Medicare patients.