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specific test.
• Dan Blue, president of Sanford Clinic, said Sanford's own health insurance plan will cover the genetic tests, and he thinks others insurers will follow suit when they see how the tests can help them avoid paying for unnecessary complications.
• Generally, health insurers will cover genetic testing when it's medically necessary to establish a diagnosis of an inheritable disease, said Susan Pisano, a spokeswoman for America's Health Insurance Plans, a national trade group representing health insurers.
• Pisano said insurers look at several criteria: There must be a clinical basis for suspecting the patient has the disease, there must be a good test available and there must be an available treatment if the test is positive.
• "Is there something that can be done about it?" Pisano said.
• The patient would also need to undergo genetic counseling to understand the findings, she added.
• The money from T. Denny Sanford, a 78-year-old retired banker and businessman, will also be used to develop a research program to define successful genomic markers, recruit top geneticists and partner with Augustana College and the University of South Dakota for workforce development and education.
• Sanford in 2007 gave $400 million the Sioux Valley health system, which then adopted his name. He has given the system nearly $1 billion.
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