Benzinga | Dec 1, 2020 10:35AM EST

Natera Reports The Largest Health Plan In US Has Extended Coverage Of Noninvasive Prenatal Testing To All Pregnancies

Natera, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTRA), a pioneer and global leader in cell-free DNA testing, today announced that the largest health plan in the United States has extended coverage of NIPT to all pregnancies.



The expanded coverage comes only a few months after the publication of a guideline by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) in collaboration with the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM), that supports offering aneuploidy screening options, including NIPT, to all patients, regardless of maternal age or baseline risk.1 This medical policy change also follows a number of other recently expanded coverage decisions from top payors, with the vast majority of commercial lives in the United States now covered.

"The average risk NIPT market is significantly underpenetrated, and lack of payor coverage has been the primary barrier for broad adoption," said Paul Billings, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Natera. "Studies have shown that broad adoption of NIPT could result in 98% fewer false positives and 20% fewer false negative results for common aneuploidies, compared to older screening modalities.2,3 Today's announcement has the potential to have a positive impact on health outcomes for pregnancies in the U.S."

"As the market leader, Natera is in a strong position to capitalize on the significant volume growth opportunity and improved test economics resulting from these policy changes," said Ramesh Hariharan, General Manager of Natera's Women's Health business. "We believe we are on track to achieve profitability in our Women's Health business in 2021."