Key Points
- In December, Profound announced a new sales and marketing partnership with Siemens Healthineers.
- New insurance payment rates to treatment centers went into effect on January 1 for the TULSA procedure.
Profound Medical has developed and commercialized the TULSA-PRO system, which is used to treat prostate disease via transurethral ultrasound ablation (TULSA) under real-time MR guidance. The incision-free TULSA procedure ablates targeted prostate tissue from the inside out, using a precise sound absorption technology and gentle heating to preserve urinary continence and erectile function. Surgeons can use the TULSA-PRO system to perform whole- or partial-gland prostate ablation in patients with low-, intermediate, or high-risk prostate cancer, those with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), or patients who are on active surveillance but do not want to wait for their cancer to advance.
On January 1, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) and physician fee schedule (PFS) reimbursement levels went into effect for the three new CPT® Category 1 codes that cover the TULSA procedure. Payments were raised to Urology Level 7 Ambulatory Payment Classification (ASC) for all three sites of service: hospital outpatient, ambulatory surgical center, and private office/non-facility. The expansion of these reimbursement codes allows treating physicians – and their patients – to receive Medicare coverage for the TULSA procedure in a wider range of treatment settings. This is unique among prostate treatments.
Furthermore, in December, Profound Medical entered into a new sales and marketing collaboration with Siemens Healthineers. The two companies will work together to co-market their integrated TULSA-PRO/Magnetom Free.Max MRI scanner. The Free.Max MRI is a smaller power (0.55 Tesla), lighter weight, and less cumbersome device that can be installed in a variety of medical settings. The integration of Free.Max with TULSA-PRO will make the treatment much more accessible to patients and physicians.
In a press release, Donald Hardie, head of Global Marketing & Sales Magnetic Resonance at Siemens Healthineers, commented, “We were excited to present our common vision with Profound for a complete MRI-guided prostate therapy solution at its physician peer-to-peer ‘PRO-TALK Live!’ event in September 2024. This complete solution represents the convergence of our respective cutting-edge diagnostic and interventional MR technologies. Magnetom Free.Max has already brought MR to new places, including orthopedic centers, rural hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers, where patients need diagnostic quality MR imaging most. We look forward to working with Profound to help expand access to prostate disease treatment with TULSA as well.”
“Our definitive co-sales and co-marketing agreement with Siemens Healthineers aligns perfectly with our goal of ensuring that our technology can be readily accessed by urologists and their prostate disease patients in the widest possible range of treatment settings, especially now that CMS has recognized the value proposition of the TULSA procedure and placed it at Urology APC Level 7,” said Arun Menawat, Profound’s CEO and Chairman. “Importantly, the Magnetom Free.Max offers image quality that is comparable to larger 1.5T scanners. Accordingly, this new program which Profound is calling TULSA+, is ideally suited for ASCs that already need high-quality MR imaging for their orthopedic applications, but will now be able to leverage the investment for urological treatment of prostate cancer and/or BPH as well. Given the positive Final Rules, the TULSA+ program not only has the potential to provide flexible access to the technology in the surgical departments of hospitals, in ASCs, and even in doctors’ offices, but also a strong economic case for user adoption regardless of setting.”