“It’s the disease of not listening that I am troubled with,” a quote attributed to King Henry IV, kicked off a spirited panel discussion on the importance of incorporating the patient’s voice during treatment. Experts addressed these challenges at the 2018 Association of Community Cancer Centers Annual Meeting & Cancer [ Read More ]
Progress in personalized medicine is currently taking place within a system of governmental regulation that was largely created before the term was even coined. Today’s regulatory framework, directed primarily by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a handful of other federal and state agencies, was created incrementally over the [ Read More ]
Leonard Saltz, MD, Chief of Gastrointestinal Oncology Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), New York City, wants the new checkpoint inhibitors to be available to his patients, but he questions how society will pay for them. Offering his perspective on value during the plenary session presentation, Saltz estimated that [ Read More ]
Leonard Saltz, MD, Chief of Gastrointestinal Oncology Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, was given a prominent soapbox from which to voice his concerns about the rising cost of cancer care. At the plenary session, Saltz was asked to share his perspective on the rising costs of [ Read More ]
Recent advances in medical technology have led to remarkable breakthroughs in cancer treatments. Unfortunately, new cancer drugs come with enormous price tags, and patients are forced to make difficult decisions about very high out-of-pocket costs for expensive treatments with measurable but sometimes modest health benefits. The chair of the ASCO [ Read More ]
Contrary to the notion that chemotherapy infusion has largely become a hospital-based procedure, analysts from Aetna found that three-quarters of their patients still receive chemotherapy in the community. They also found tremendous variability, by site of service, in the cost of caring for cancer patients. “There’s been much discussion about [ Read More ]
Payment models that align reimbursement to support treatment planning and care coordination encourage oncology care providers to adhere to cancer treatment pathways, said Jennifer Malin, MD, PhD. Anthem has a Cancer Care Quality Program that aligns practice patterns of physicians through enhanced reimbursement mechanisms. The providers qualify for enhanced reimbursement [ Read More ]
For the treatment of advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, the use of trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) is not cost-effective when compared with lapatinib plus capecitabine from both a societal and a payer’s perspective, according to an analysis conducted at Western University of Health Sciences College of Pharmacy in Pomona, CA. From a [ Read More ]
Winston Wong, PharmD, is president of W-Squared Group, Longboat Key, Florida and former associate vice president of pharmacy management, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, Baltimore, Maryland. According to the 2013 Annual Report on Progress Against Cancer published in 2014 by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), cancer death rates have declined [ Read More ]
Most cancer patients want cost-of-treatment discussions. When they do take place, these discussions do not lead to negative feelings in most patients, according to a survey of cancer patients. Unfortunately, few oncologists participating in a separate survey felt comfortable when discussing cost with patients, found Ronan J. Kelly, MD, and [ Read More ]
