[Hill} Contractors for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) cut access to tests for transplant patients that could show early signs of organ rejection despite expert physicians advising the opposite, a new report has found. The Health Equity in Transplantation Coalition (HEiTC) announced Friday that a Freedom of Information Act request found that Medicare contractors limited access to blood tests even after the recommendations given by the government-chosen panel of medical experts.
Al B. Sure!, executive chairman of HEiTC, said he was "incredibly alarmed" by the findings.
"Instead of listening to these experts and considering what these tests meant to tens of thousands of transplant recipients, the contractor not only ignored but withheld their expert opinion," he said. "In the process, they took away a vital tool for other doctors to monitor an overwhelmingly Black and Brown transplant community, which for the last year has lived with more anxiety than they should."
"It’s never been more important that these cutbacks are reversed and coverage without any tie to a biopsy is restored," he added.