Recently, Noridian announced that on August 20, 2026, there will be a Contractor Advisory Meeting on the topic of tests for neurodegeneration. it will be multi-contractor, including CGS, Noridian, Wellpoint Federal, and Palmetto.
See an announcement at Noridian here, at CGS here.
I didn't see Novitas as a co-sponsor and at least so far, nothing on their CAC calendar page.
But here's a mystery. By myself, I couldn't find any kind of CAC webpage for NGS MAC. I did learn that since April 1, this MAC generally writees "Wellpoint Federal" as its name, but is generally still listed as NGS MAC by CMS and it still uses the ngsmedicare.com website..
To jump to the finish line, there IS a CAC web page at NGS Medicare:.
But you can't get to it by google searches like - NGS medicare contractor advisory committee
And you can't get to it by entering that phrase into the NGS Medicare search box on its own website. That search CAN get a few individual standalone meeting announcements. And those announcements, may inside their text include a link to the NGS MAC home page. And once you get to the CAC home page, it seems to be framed as a subpage of "Medical Policies / LCDs" but ... if you are on the Medical Policies LCDs page, it doesn't link forward to the CAC page.
OK, so there IS such a NGS CAC home page, but it's not easy to find. It's still true, for example that AI can find all the CAC webpages except NGS, and it's still true, that even when you have the link given to you, and know what it is, it's hard to re-create a path to it.
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Here's Chat GPT web research:
It writes: I checked the six MACs you named. The pattern is uneven.
| MAC | Dedicated CAC information page? | What I found |
|---|---|---|
| Noridian | Yes — strong | Noridian has a clear CAC landing page under Policies → LCD → Contractor Advisory Committee. It has overview language, upcoming meetings, prior meetings, agendas, key questions, recordings, and transcripts. It explicitly says all CAC meetings are open to the public. (Medicare) |
| Palmetto | Yes, but titled “LCD Development Meetings,” not simply CAC | Palmetto’s page has a CAC section explaining that Palmetto periodically hosts CAC meetings, uses formal CAC panels, records meetings, and posts meeting dates/times and materials there. It also covers open meetings on the same page. (Domino Apps) |
| WPS GHA | Yes-ish; less clean as an index | WPS has a page titled “The J5 & J8 Contractor Advisory Committee (CAC),” plus CAC volunteer and meeting-document pages. Search snippets show it describes CAC as advisory and evidence-focused for LCD development, but the site did not render cleanly in the browser tool. (WPSGHA) |
| NGS | I did not find a dedicated public CAC landing page | Targeted searches of ngsmedicare.com for “Contractor Advisory Committee,” “CAC,” “Local Coverage Determination,” and the IVL CAC produced no NGS CAC landing page. However, NGS clearly participates in and hosts CACs; other MACs list NGS-hosted meetings, including the August 20, 2025 IVL CAC. (FCSO Medicare) |
| Novitas | Yes | Novitas has “Contractor advisory committee (CAC) meetings” pages for JH/JL. The search result text says CAC meetings are held to obtain advice about the strength of published evidence. CMS’s MCD for a Novitas proposed LCD links directly to Novitas JH/JL CAC meeting pages. (Novitas Solutions) |
| FCSO / First Coast | Yes — strong | FCSO has a “Proposed LCD: CAC meetings” page, a multi-jurisdictional CAC page, CAC minutes pages, and a CAC fact sheet. The CAC page says all CAC members and the public are welcome by webinar, prior meetings are recorded/transcribed, and registration opens about two weeks before meetings. (FCSO Medicare) |
Practical finding
The strongest “clean CAC landing page” is Noridian. FCSO is also strong, though split across several pages. Palmetto has a functional page, but it is nested under LCD Development Meetings rather than branded as a standalone CAC index. (It seems that CMS prefers to call them Contractor Advisory Meetings" while Palmetto prefers to call them "LCD Development Meetings") Novitas has dedicated CAC pages, although the site is JavaScript-heavy and not always easily rendered. WPS has CAC information, but it looks more fragmented.
So: NGS is the outlier: the web page was harder to find that the several other MACs.
That matters for your point: a meeting can be technically public, recorded, and linked somewhere, while still being poorly discoverable if the host MAC does not maintain a predictable CAC index page.
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Wellpoint Federal is the new name of NGS MAC since April 1, 2026. See Wellpointfederal.com vs NGSMedicare.com. Use the latter link "during the transition."
