Heide Bajnrauh is a managing director at Manatt Health, where she applies her extensive background guiding clients through various challenges and opportunities by developing innovative reimbursement strategies for Medicare, Medicaid and commercial payers and meeting their respective business objectives. With deep experience in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device sectors, Heide advises on all aspects of reimbursement, including coding and coverage. She works closely with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Congress, other government entities, and commercial insurers.
Heide helps create tailored strategies for a variety of manufacturers and providers. Some of her most notable matters include leading a project for reimbursement and commercialization for a first-of-its-kind sensor in a pill technology, which involved working with CMS, commercial payers, patient advocates and Congress to develop a path forward for this nascent technology. She also worked with Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) to develop local coverage determinations (LCDs) for a medical technology company’s implantable continuous glucose monitoring system and worked with commercial payers to adopt new coverage policies. Additionally, Heide developed champions on Capitol Hill and got the first-ever stand-alone bill for blood clot awareness and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding for blood clot education.
On the reimbursement front, Heide has worked with medical directors to draft payer coverage language for innovative technologies in the medical field; prepared coding applications for both Current Procedural Terminology® and Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System billing codes; developed commercialization landscapes; and worked with internal research analysts developing health technology assessments, dossiers and health economic analyses.
Heide has also worked on regulatory and congressional issues involving health policy at both the agency and legislative levels. She served as a staff member in Senator John McCain’s office, both in Arizona and on Capitol Hill, working on legislative issues such as Medicare reform, CMS payment policy and National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, and she served as a health policy adviser for McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.