Many major insurers, including several Blue Cross/Blue Shield affiliates, Aetna, and others consider CMA testing for ASD and other intellectual disabilities as medically necessary and recommend the use of CMA testing in the initial postnatal evaluation of individuals with multiple congenital anomalies, DD/ID, and ASD. It appears that this positive recommendation given by the insurers is in part based on the recommendations given by the professional societies as discussed in the previous section of this course.
Although many insurers consider CMA testing for ASD as medically necessary, a few insurers specifically consider the FirstStepDx PLUS® and other similar genetic testing for ASD as experimental and investigational. This is because the peer-reviewed medical literature does not support the use of these procedures and services in the assessment and treatment of autism and other pervasive developmental disorders.
