The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the “government agency tasked with producing evidence to improve the quality of healthcare while working with partners to ensure that the evidence is understood and used” recently announced that it will be initiating a systematic review for lower limb prostheses. The systematic review will be performed through the Evidence Based Practice Center Program of the AHRQ and the stated purpose of the systematic review is “to examine the available clinical evidence that defines practices in the care of beneficiaries who require lower limb prostheses (LLP).”
While the announcement does not tie the systematic review to the work of the inter-agency taskforce assigned to review the delayed draft Local Coverage Determination (LCD) that was released by the DME MACs in the summer of 2015, it is clear that the initiation of the systematic review for lower limb prostheses is directly related to the work of this taskforce.
AOPA will be requesting a meeting with representatives of the AHRQ in order to discuss existing systematic reviews for lower limb prostheses that have recently been completed through AOPA funding as well as the previous and current cost effectiveness studies that have been developed by Dobson DaVanzo. In addition, AOPA will discuss the ongoing work of the RAND Corporation to determine the cost effectiveness of prosthetic intervention.
AOPA will continue to inform its membership of any developments in the status of the AHRQ initiated systematic review.
Questions regarding this issue may be sent to Joe McTernan at jmcternan@aopanet.org or Devon Bernard at dbernard@aopanet.org.