The public comment periods on Medicare's plan to change how it pays for artificial intelligence and other diagnostic software have now closed. Comments on the hospital outpatient proposal were due Aug. 31, and the comment period on the physician fee schedule proposal closed Sept. 14. Final rules are expected later this year, and one piece of the plan could add patient cost sharing to some algorithm-based lab analyses that now carry none.
The proposal is not a coverage decision. It does not add or remove any test from Medicare. It changes how Medicare pays for certain software-based services, and that detail matters to patients because different Medicare payment systems handle patient cost sharing differently.
