Alex Nowak: Okay. Great. Good afternoon, everyone. Going back to the national payers, the team here has been working for years to get, let’s say, one of the top four payers to come in and reimburse the DMT test. Bret, as you joined, I don’t know, six months or so ago, when you reviewed how the team was communicating with the payers and what they’re providing the payers with, whether it be the TRUST data or economic data or any other details? What sort of changes have you made there into the communication with the payers to just hopefully make this more likely we’ll get one of those big guys over the finish line?
Bret Christensen: Yes. Thanks for the question, Alex. So, we — of the four national payers, we did have three reiterate a negative policy decision early in the year, really prior to my arrival. We — when we look at the story, the messaging, everything that a payer should look at to evaluate coverage of the DMT, it’s a great story. It’s a great story for payers. There’s a ton of cost savings here for payers if they just cover the test. And so what we saw — what my understanding is, what we saw from those negative policy decisions was the lack of sighting of the most recent data, our health economic data that shows these tremendous savings to the system. That’s probably true. We’re a small company. It’s hard to get these payers attention.
We’ve got a really strong story. We’ll keep hitting them with the TRUST 2 data that we will see at the end of the year is an opportunity, once we publish that to revisit the test with some of those payers that have given us this negative policy decision. And then there’s a whole bunch of advocacy that we’ve stepped up and need to continue to step up with patients, dermatologists, and anyone that’s going to advocate for this test, which really is superior. It’s superior patient care. It’s great for patients. It’s good for payers. It really does benefit all of our stakeholders. And it’s just a comprehensive message that we need to continue to hit them with. We’re confident we’re going to get there, really. And look, if we continue to have more regional wins, more the Blues wins, all that puts pressure as well on national payers.
We know we’re going to get there. It just takes a little bit of time. I think Alex, if you remember, I’ve cited my experience, it takes a lot of time sometimes with these national payers. At my previous organization, I joined that organization 15 years into the product launch. We still didn’t have coverage for many of the national payers. So it does take a lot of time. We’ve got a really attractive value proposition that I know is going to resonate with payers. It’s just going to take us a little bit to get there.
Alex Nowak: One of the things I’ve talked to the team about over the years of covering DermTech was, if we need to get an AAD guideline out there for DMT, what’s your view on it? I mean, guidelines obviously super important from your old employer, other healthcare names is super important. It’s always been a little bit dismissed that we need AAD guidelines. But what’s your view?
Bret Christensen: Well, I think it certainly would help. I don’t know that we need it. If you — honestly if you think about some of the headwinds that we have within dermatology, it isn’t that dermatologists, in my opinion, are waiting for guidelines. It really is they need to understand where this test fits within their practice. And some of the changes that we’ve made for messaging is about helping them understand exactly what it is. Remember, genomics is still fairly new to the dermatology specialty. So we’re explaining what the test is, what it is not. It isn’t a diagnostic. So we’re not diagnosing melanoma, we’re ruling out melanoma. And that has a tremendous value to patients and dermatologists because again, there’s some lesions that they see that are very suspicious that they’re going to go right to biopsy, that’s fine with us.
But when there’s a lesion that you’re uncertain about that is mild to moderately atypical, somewhat suspicious, you don’t want to do biopsy in many of those cases. We want to start there. We want to get those biopsies because they don’t want to do them. And the DermTech Melanoma Test is non-invasive and a perfect solution with a really good patient experience. So look, I think we’ve had maybe some missed opportunities with the messaging that we’ve remedied and we’re just now getting that rolled out. I think that’s going to resonate with dermatologists. And look, if we get 10% of the 4 million biopsies that are done every year, that’s 400,000 tests, that’d be a pretty good start to where we want to go. And so that’s what we’ve done. I don’t — look, guidelines would help and we’d certainly welcome that, but I don’t think it’s a critical piece that’s missing.
Alex Nowak: Okay. Makes total sense. And then, lastly, the Biomarker Bill is your home state now passed one number of other larger states have passed them recently they go into effect next year. Could that actually — I guess with the work internally that you’ve done, could that actually be a material boost of the ASP next year?
Bret Christensen: Well, you know what it should do is, it should boost policy and contracting with our market access teams because these Biomarker Bills are pretty explicit with what should and should not be covered. And depending on the state and California is one of those that we did callout in the script here that is really going to be positive and should influence payers to cover the DMT. And so what the team’s doing is we’re taking these legislative headlines as they happen and we’re taking them to payers and just incorporating that into our message to again, encourage them to cover the DMT sooner. And look, they should have an effect. Where — this is why we called it out in the script we’re really optimistic with this trend and hope that it continues.
Kevin Sun: Yes. And the mountain momentum of these Biomarker Bills in various states, right? This is where when say a national payer has to cover in a number of states and also for Medicare Advantage populations if they don’t cover more broadly now they’ve got disparities of coverage within their populations, which makes it difficult to kind of administer. So again, it’s not something that we view as going to be the one silver bullet but it’s a mounting piece of action that should help bring on coverage in the future.
Alex Nowak: Yes, totally agree. Appreciate the update. Thank you.
Bret Christensen: Thanks, Alex.
Kevin Sun: Thanks, Alex.
Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Please standby for the next question. The next question comes from Dan Brennan with Cowen. Your line is open.
