Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Brief Blog: CMS Head of Coverage Quoted in Trade Press: Data, Not Gloss or Sugar-Coating

The head of the coverage division at CMS, Tamara Syrek-Jensen, quoted today in trade press from the annual fall Advamed conference.

https://medcitynews.com/2018/09/at-advameds-annual-conference-cms-official-to-industry-tell-us-the-truth/


See the full article at link above, but short quotes here:

"When you come talk to us, let’s just have an open, honest conversation,” she said. “At least that’s my preference.” 
In the question and answer session, [the reporter] got up and asked her for clarification saying “it seems like you have encountered dishonest device manufacturers. Can you share?” 
To which the room exploded with laughter and Jensen responded, “So many times. Oh gosh, I took a meeting just last week” to which the room laughed some more. 
She added that while she couldn’t elaborate specifically, it was likely a case of “sugarcoating the data,” but “when you dig a little bit deeper you can tell perhaps that it isn’t necessarily [in reality] how it was being portrayed.”