by AJ Riviezzo
There has been a lot of noise and fury on the policy that was proposed and purported to be Aetna’s new Varicose Vein directives effective September 1st. There are now a few caveats to the ‘policy’ along with some new information.
The first caveat is that, despite Aetna being on the front cover of the policy and in the document, this policy was actually produced by eviCore. When Aetna was contacted about it, Aetna pointed to their own policies on their Aetna website. eviCore was apparently contracted to help develop policies around Arterial and Venous services. Per eviCore’s website, eviCore’s goal is to improve care by connecting patients, providers and health plans with intelligent, evidence-based solutions. It feels like perhaps the providers were left out of this plan.
On to the second caveat. eviCore during the Tuesday of this week meeting noted that only the Arterial elements were being moved forward. Listeners on the call were unsure if that meant the venous portion was not going to be discussed or was being dropped. They meant to be clear that it was being dropped.
Yesterday, a call was held with eviCore physicians and a number of society groups representing the venous community including the AVLS. In this call, eviCore has reiterated that the venous elements are not moving forward. They also noted the two criteria concerns, ICAVL and RPVI/RVT, were likely being dropped from any proposed policy recommendations to Aetna. In short, despite all of the sturm and drang, nothing seems to have changed at the practice level at this time.