CMS Pays for AI Heart Detection on Chest CT

AI just found heart disease hiding in your chest CT scan. And now hospitals can actually bill Medicare for it.

This is one of the most underreported reimbursement developments in preventive cardiology in a decade. If you run a health system, imaging center, or FQHC with CT capability, you need to understand exactly what changed on April 1, 2026.

CMS created a new reimbursement pathway for AI algorithms that automatically detect coronary artery calcium and aortic valve calcium on routine chest CT scans. Bunkerhill Health secured both FDA clearance and this new CMS billing code, making it the first company to unlock incidental cardiac findings in a billable, reimbursable way.

Every year, millions of chest CTs are ordered for unrelated reasons — pulmonary nodule follow-up, lung cancer screening, trauma evaluation. The images are captured. The heart is right there in the field of view. And historically, no one wa…