General Requirements

13.5.1 - General Requirements (Rev. 863; Issued: 02-12-19; Effective: 10-03-18; Implementation: 01-08-19) The Medicare Coverage Database (MCD) is the central repository that houses proposed, and final LCDs, and LCD related articles. • The MACs shall publish all proposed and final LCDs and LCD related articles on the MCD. The public may access the MCD at http://www.cms.gov/medicare-coverage- database. • MACs must ensure the accuracy of the information entered into the MCD. • If a MAC decides to have LCDs and related articles on their MAC web sites, then the MAC must link from their MAC website to the MCD. MACs shall finalize or retire all proposed LCDs within a rolling year of publication date of the proposed LCD on the MCD (365 days). If an unusual circumstance occurs and the MAC wishes to request an exception to this requirement, they shall notify their COR and LCD BFLs at least 21 business days before the one year expiration date. The MAC shall ensure that all LCDs do not conflict with all statutes, rulings, regulations, and national coverage, payment, and coding policies. For all new and revised LCDs MACs shall no longer include national policy language found in statute, regulations, rulings, interpretive manual instructions, etc. in the coverage and indications section of their LCDs. If contractors need to reference a national policy in the coverage and indications section of their LCD, they shall cite the reference (e.g. publication number, Medicare title of manual, section of manual) without reiterating the text from the policy. It is no longer appropriate to include Current Procedure Terminology (CPT) codes or International Classification of Diseases-Tenth Revision-Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) codes in the LCDs. All CPT and ICD-10-CM codes shall be removed from LCDs and placed in billing & coding articles or Policy Articles that are to be published to the MCD and related to the LCD. CMS will provide additional instructions on the date upon which this change will be effective.