ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Now nearly 20 years old, CVRx may have switched its clinical focus, but it has remained committed to the importance of developing a reimbursement strategy early on, including collecting health economics data as part of its clinical studies. This outlier approach has paid off with the company receiving NTAP approval for increased reimbursement.
When CVRx Inc. was founded in 2001, the notion of a medtech start-up identifying a reimbursement pathway and collecting health economics data as part of a clinical study was near the bottom of a new company’s strategic priorities. At the time, the conventional wisdom was that any start-up’s eventual acquirer, likely to be a large strategic, would be responsible for building a reimbursement strategy, leaving the small company to focus largely on product development.
Now, of course, the importance of an early emphasis on identifying and planning for a reimbursement pathway is much more well accepted as reimbursement has become the biggest challenge facing medtech companies developing innovative technologies.