Innovations: Medtronic and the Chronicle ICD

Quietly…Medtronic has begun late stage clinical trials of a truly remarkable device – the Chronicle ICD. As noted on their website and in various articles:

“The investigational device, known as the Chronicle® ICD, features both the traditional ICD’s ability to restore normal heart rhythm following a dangerously fast heartbeat and the first-ever real-time tracking of pressure inside the heart, body temperature, patient activity and heart rate 24 hours a day. Patients implanted with a Chronicle ICD will transmit that information from home, using a standard phone line, to their physicians who view the recorded data from a secure Web site in their office and then potentially make changes to patients’ medications or diet. “

While clearly a modern health care achievement…there is unfortunately…no one willing to pay for it. Medicare has yet to create a separate payment amount for the device – but rather will be using the current payment level for devices far less competitive. And as Medicare goes, so do the commercial payors.

In the end, I suspect it will be the hospitals who pay for the device in order to maintain a positive image in their communities and to provide their practicing physicians with cutting edge technology.

How will the hospitals continue to pay for the technology? Many, unfortunately will have to find ways to cross-subsidize the service with a more profitable one (such as margins from neurosurgery)…which are harder and harder to come by.

Sustainable? Not really…but than do we wonder why our health care costs are increasing?

No…we don’t want to have to think about that…we just want the latest and greatest…but you have to admit…having your physician be able to monitor your heart as he drinks his morning coffee and reads the newspaper…that’s pretty cool.