Good News for COVID-19 Testing Companies: Medicare Nearly Doubles Reimbursement
As of Tuesday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began paying laboratories $100 for each COVID-19 diagnostic test they conduct using high-throughput technologies to rapidly process large numbers of samples, nearly twice the approximately $51 per test the agency pays them for other types of COVID-19 tests.
"This is an absolute game-changer for nursing homes, where risk of coronavirus infection is high among our most vulnerable," CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement.
The increased reimbursement will benefit diagnostic companies, such as Laboratory Corporation of America (NYSE: LH) and Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX), which both have large networks of labs that have been running COVID-19 tests for over a month.
Source Fool.com