A big win for psychiatry in Florida, thanks to long-time FPS member and FPS’ 2018 Practitioner of the Year: Dr. Debra Barnett.
An important tool for psychiatry has been TMS, but many insurances have been using extremely restrictive criteria. Dr. Barnett heavily advocated nine years ago for better coverage for TMS by First Coast Service Options (the Medicare administrator for Florida) as the lead person from FPS and as a member of the CAC. Then in 2018, Dr. Barnett tried to get FCSO to reconsider their coverage policy, and, in January 2019, they agreed to put this on the waitlist for re-consideration.
Finally, FCSO reconsidered coverage for TMS. And they agreed to lower the requirement from four failed med trials to one failed med trial! The real effect of this is that not only will persons covered by Medicare have better access, but commercial insurers tend to follow suit for their coverage requirements.
To learn more, HERE is the link for the FCSO page about the coverage. In the upper right corner is a button for the Tracking Sheet. In the Tracking Sheet, it shows that there were three persons who submitted letters for re-consideration of various aspects of the policy, including Dr. Barnett.
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