East Brunswick’s Savient Pharmaceuticals Inc. is starting the new year with a major boost.
Savient’s chronic gout drug, Krystexxa, now has its own permanent billing code from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The code – known as a J-code – is important because it makes it easier for healthcare providers to get reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid. If a drug doesn’t have its own code, doctors have to use a miscellaneous code, which can lengthen the amount of time it takes for providers to get a reimbursement.
Savient launched Krystexxa last February, and according to a company press release, the drug brought in $1.9 million in revenue in the third quarter of 2011.
In an interview with NJBIZ last September Senior Vice President of Corporate Development Christine Mikail said Savient was expecting to have a “slow and steady build in the market” but she said the company expected a boost in sales once the J-code was in place.
The code was officially assigned in November, but it didn’t become effective until Jan. 1.
In announcing the assignment of the J-code last year, Savient President and CEO John H. Johnson said it could take three to six months for the new code to be fully loaded into the entire Medicaid and Medicare payer system.
