CTPs at a Turning Point: Regulation, Innovation, and Market Pressures Ahead
Key Takeaways
- Overregulation Could Stall Innovation: While oversight is necessary, overly restrictive reimbursement policies may discourage industry investment in research and development. If companies cannot foresee a sustainable reimbursement pathway, they may scale back innovation; potentially leaving clinicians with fewer advanced treatment options.
- Reimbursement Shifts Are Driving Price Volatility: This speaker shares that price and ost instability reflects broader uncertainty about how reimbursement levels will ultimately support or undermine product viability.
- Vendor Influence on Utilization Is an Underaddressed Risk: Aggressive sales tactics—particularly revenue-focused messaging to newer practitioners—may contribute to inappropriate utilization and distorted expectations about income generation from CTPs. The speaker calls for stronger guardrails around vendor conduct to protect both healthcare dollars and clinicians from compliance risk.
Transcript
Please note: This content is a direct transcript, capturing the authentic conversation without edits. Some language may reflect the flow of live discussion rather than polished text.
We are always fearful that the pendulum is going to swing the other way and regulations are going to suddenly impede treatment for patients and practitioners to be able to do what they do best. And this is really something that we need to be able to keep an eye on. I'm also however concerned about limiting research. Let's take a step back 10 years when this whole industry was really just starting up again. The Wild West Company A was making theirs, company B, somebody's using stem cells, somebody's using fish skin. Who knows where this stuff was going to be coming from. But if we have industry suddenly being gun shy because they're going to be creating a product that's not going to be reimbursed enough to be able to maintain the costs of research, we're not going to continue to move forward. And don't misunderstand me and nobody's crying over the profits of industry, but we all also know that the costs are upfront for industry.
And the reason that the products are costing what they are is because they've got to make up for everything that they spent in the forefront. Well, if regulations become so draconian that they do not see the future of reimbursement refilling the coffers for research, they're not going to do it. And we're suddenly going to be left with what we have. We have seen this already because with the new levels of reimbursement, some companies are finding that they're charging too little in their own minds. And so we are actually seeing costs in the last month of doubling and even tripling from what it was in 2025 simply because the regulators left that wiggle room. Well, if I'm charging you $2 for a newspaper and you say, here's a $5 bill, I'm going to keep the three bucks. And that's kind of what we're having with here too.
But there's another piece of this also that I think is really not being seen by the regulators. Honestly, I put some of this on practitioners as well too. That is the sales force. That is the vendors that come to your offices because they are selling a bill of goods to practitioners out there, especially the new ones, the neophytes, Dr. Jones, I just came from Dr. Smith's office. Do you know that he is upped his income by a million dollars a year by using this particular product? I can show you how to build this so that you too can be making this kind of money by using CTPs. We know these conversations are happening. We know the detailed people are walking in with codes, are walking in with templates on how to build these things. Is it illegal? Well, it's not illegal. Maybe it should be, or at least maybe it should be more regulated.
But when you have a new practitioner to this world that doesn't really understand fully the reimbursement aspect of it, they're going to lean on the vendors just like we do with every other product that comes out. And let's face it, it's tempting. It is very temping and all of a sudden you have multiple situations. You have healthcare dollars that are not being spent appropriately, and you have practitioners that are being put in a terrible situation, unknowingly sometimes, of abuse. So we need to reign in what vendors can do when they come to our offices so that they're not only telling us the truth about their products, but that they're not painting a pie in the sky of the monies that are going to come flowing into your office. And I really don't see this happening yet, but boy, I really do hope that it does come because I think it is really going to get a good hold on what's happening out there.
Dr. Alper is a Trustee, on the Board of Trustees, of the American Podiatric Medical Association, and a Board Member of the American Diabetes Association, Northeast Region.
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