Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Duration Required to Release an LCD After Its Comment Period

CMS requires MACs to provides links to CMS databases for current LCDs, for draft LCD under review, and for future effective LCDs.

I pulled data for Jurisdiction F.  Currently 6 LCDs are in "released to final" status, meaning edits have been completed following a comment period.   The interval from comment period closure to release was 92 days (four out of six LCDs), with outliers at 77 and 221 days.

Jurisdiction 6 also has 22 LCDs in draft status for which the comment period has closed.  For 14 LCDs, the comment period closed very recently (usually April 10).

Eight LCDs are now in "comment review limbo," with 8 under review for 132 days (about four and a half months) and three under review for about 250-400 days (about a year).

Eleven of all the LCDs are MOLDX LCDs.

Excel here.  Raw data online here.   Picture, click to enlarge:


In the picture, NRTF = Not Released to Final.
The meaning of RTF is left as an exercise for the reader.