From ASCRS 2026: New Frontiers in Eye Care (Part 3) – Featuring Alcon

In Part 3 of our ASCRS 2026 series, we explore photobiomodulation and its potential role in advancing eye care. We’re joined by Traci Brackett and Joshua Anderson from Alcon, who share their insights on this emerging therapy, how it works, and where it may fit into clinical practice. From innovation to real-world application, this conversation highlights what providers should know as new technologies continue to shape the future of patient care.

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Transcript

Thanks for joining us everybody for another episode of Ophthalmology Reimbursed. I'm Rebecca Greenlaw. And I'm Mary Pat Johnson.

We are in our final days here at ASCRS in Washington DC. It's been a great meeting, a lot of good information being passed around. We are thrilled to have Alcon here with us today.

We have Joshua Anderson and Traci Brackett and so we're just going to dive right in. There's a lot of information to talk about with photobiomodulation. So Joshua, for our listeners who may be hearing the term for the first time, can you explain what photobiomodulation is? 

Yeah, I'd be happy to Rebecca. Thank you so much for having me. It's certainly a very exciting time right now. We have a new therapy now that just got approved at the end of 2024.

So just over a year now it's been available in the marketplace here in the United States. But photobiomodulation has been around for almost a couple decades. It's been utilized more widely outside of ophthalmology until recently.

But photobiomodulation or PBM is what it's known as. It's a non-invasive medical therapy that utilizes red and near infrared light to stimulate beneficial biologic responses in cells and tissues. And really at its core what it does is it interacts directly with the mitochondria to reduce inflammation, promote tissue repair, and just enhance cellular energy production overall.

Exciting. So Joshua, what is photobiomodulation aiming to address? And where do you see the most exciting potential for this technology in ophthalmology? 

Yeah, no, great question. So I think at its very core what photobiomodulation or PBM is trying to address here is fundamentally it's really aimed at solving really one big clinical problem. And that is really when cells underperform when the mitochondria or kind of the powerhouse of the cells, they're stressed. So what it's really trying to do here is just kind of help with that dysfunction as we all get older. Our cells tend to kind of break down and not work as well as they once did. 

So that's really what they're trying to do is upregulate that cellular kind of, you know, dysfunction and metabolic dysfunction and kind of, you know, solve that problem per se. And would you mind sharing some of the conversations that you've been having about PBM and its role in dry AMD? Oh, happily. Yeah, it's really an exciting time right now.

As I mentioned earlier, we have roughly about 18 to 20 million patients just here in the United States, about 200 million of them worldwide that suffer from age-related macular degeneration. And, you know, there really isn't many therapies at all available to patients for early to intermediate stage AMD. So having a therapy such as Valeda PBM now available to them that can at the very least change the trajectory of their disease state and in many cases even improve their vision is very, very exciting. 

And so I think a lot of ophthalmologists, retina specialists, they're very, very interested to just learn more about photobiomodulation and more about Valeda specifically to just help so many of those millions of patients that up until now haven't really received much or have even been able to have much help or much hope for treating of their disease. Yeah, so that's really exciting to be able to to introduce that hope. Thank you for sharing that, Josh.

I'm going to interject here and change directions just a bit. So I want to speak to you, Traci, about some of the more practical applications, the practice management side of this. So from the practice standpoint, how do you see this fitting into the physician's existing treatment protocol first and the, I don't know, clinic and how smoothly, how can we make that go more smoothly? Sure.

Well, thanks for having me as well and thank you, Josh, for kicking us off from an Alcon standpoint. We're so excited that Valeda PBM is the first and only treatment for dry AMD patients and the good news is all of our practices we know have these patients already. So it's not seeking out new patients all the time. 

They're already treating, they already have the opportunity to treat patients within their practice and within the workflow, we can help make that easy and it isn't really an easy flow. With every practice, we know that there's a different protocol and workflow process. So really sitting down and planning what that will be before it is integrated into the practice with key stakeholders within the practice is always suggested.

And once again, we have resources and field reimbursement expert team that can help provide the resources necessary for reimbursement standpoint with regard to the list of different documents that will be needed to include financial waivers, whether it's an ABN or exclusion of benefit examples, and we always suggest for the payers to see if they require specific financial waivers too, and then having informed consent. Those are the two major things initially that we suggest, but it's quite simple to incorporate into the workflow. Okay, and you didn't use the word reimbursement, so I'm gonna go there.

Okay. I know it's a category three code, which sometimes they have a rocky introduction. It seems this one's gone a little more smoothly.

So what should physicians and administrators think about when it comes to coding and coverage for this particular procedure? So Alcon has a billing and coding guide to support that process. Once again, and the field reimbursement expert teams that can help support those initial claim submissions as well as throughout the process when they're using and submitting claims, but they can help on the initial start to make sure the different nuances that we learned during category three are addressed. That's number one.

Number two, we're seeing paid claims, which is really exciting. Six of the seven MACs have showed paid claims or have posted fee schedules, and these claims are getting paid on a regular basis, which is really exciting. But you did mention category three can be rocky, so we want to manage expectations accordingly and let people know that because it's a category three, it's carrier priced, meaning each payer will determine what that pricing is and what the payment will be, and therefore we want to let customers know that when they're going into this so they're aware, which is a positive thing too because when there are favorable contracts, they might be getting more than what the average payment might be for a Medicare patient.

Perfect. Well, all very exciting stuff. I know on the floor of the exhibit hall and some of the lectures, this is a topic that everyone has on mind.

I think one of the most exciting pieces is it does not require a retina specialist. I think the retina specialists are schedules are saturated and general ophthalmologists are looking for a way to further serve the patients they already have. So thanks again, Traci.

For those of you who don't know Traci with Alcon, I believe she is the busiest woman in ophthalmology for 2026. She holds the title. Josh, Traci, thank you so much for joining us today.

We have a lot of fun doing this podcast and we're just so happy that you could be here with us to be a part of it. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to Ophthalmology Reimbursed, brought to you by Corcoran Consulting Group, the experts in coding, reimbursement, auditing, and education for the ophthalmic community. To learn more about how we can support your practice, visit corcoranccg.com. Be sure to follow and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time, thanks for listening to Ophthalmology Reimbursed.