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Biotech / Medical : QLT PhotoTherapeutics (QLTI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ian@SI who wrote (1136)	12/15/2000 6:12:10 PM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1321

December 14, 2000 QLT Sees Reibursement Issues Resolved In 2001 First Half By TAMSIN CARLISLE Of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL VANCOUVER -- QLT Inc. (QLTI) expects physician reimbursement issues that have held back demand for its anti-blindness drug Visudyne to be resolved during the first half of next year. Julia Levy, the company's president and chief executive, told Dow Jones that several European countries are making progress toward agreements on how ophthalmologists using Visudyne as part of a recently approved laser treatment for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) will be reimbursed for the procedure. Visudyne therapy is the only effective treatment currently approved for AMD, an eye disease that is the leading cause of blindness in people over 50 years old. Levy said Germany's government has agreed to start reimbursement for the procedure in February. France requires just one more committee to make a recommendation on reimbursement, and Italy is developing a more efficient process to replace its current system of reviewing cases individually before reimbursing ophalmologists for Visudyne treatment. QLT said in a news release Thursday that lack of reimbursement in some European countries and the U.S. would translate into lower fourth-quarter demand for Visudyne than previously expected and that it expected to miss fourthy-quarter sales estimates. It said the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration recently established a new procedure code and payment levels for Visudyne treatment that will take effect Jan. 1, so that that most of the outstanding uncertainty about reimbursement concerns European jurisdictions. Levy said European governments delayed establishing reimbursement schedules for the new ophthalmological procedure because, in Europe, physicians are reimbursed from hospital budgets for the cost of procedures they perform. Since AMD was previously untreatable, hospitals hadn't made any budget provisions for the disease. However, continued bureaucratic foot-dragging is likely to provoke public outrage because patients waiting for Visudyne treatment stand to lose their vision, Levy said. On Nasdaq, shares of QLT fell 31% to 28 1/16 on about 13.1 million shares. Levy said the stock plunge makes QLT "vulnerable" to opportunistic takeover bids but that she would expect the company's Swiss partner, Novartis AG (NVS), to step in as a white knight to fend off a hostile offer.