I-Flow Announces that Medicare Now Covers ON-Q® under Hospital Outpatient Payment System

LAKE FOREST, Calif. -- I-Flow Corporation announces that effective Jan. 1, 2007 Medicare covers ON-Q® to treat post-surgical pain under the hospital outpatient payment system. The decision by Medicare to change the designation of the code that includes ON-Q (A4306) signifies that Medicare has recognized this therapy to be a payable covered benefit and therefore medically necessary.

“Medicare’s recognition that ON-Q is medically necessary is yet another step towards our goal of establishing ON-Q as the standard of care for post-surgical pain relief,” commented Donald M. Earhart, I-Flow’s chairman, president, and CEO. “We believe and are excited that the benefits of ON-Q, which include providing significantly better pain relief than narcotics after surgery and significantly reducing the need for narcotics, have been recognized by Medicare. We expect that Medicare’s recognition will positively influence private insurance companies to follow suit and, thus, get more patients back to normal faster following their surgery,” he added.

ON-Q is now labeled to significantly reduce pain better than narcotics and to significantly reduce narcotics intake after surgery. ON-Q is a simple device that consists of a small balloon pump that holds a local anesthetic and delivers it automatically through a specially designed catheter to provide even distribution of local anesthetic over a wider area, as compared to other catheters, because of its patented wicking capabilities. Currently, more than 55 studies on the use of ON-Q have been completed and published or presented and more are underway to demonstrate the benefits of ON-Q in additional areas such as reduced infection risk, combination therapies (e.g., local anesthetic and antibiotic mixtures, a combination of a local anesthetic and an anti-inflammatory), pediatrics and chronic pain.

Source: I-Flow Corporation