Oncology

Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) have sent a letter to the FDA urging the regulatory body to find efficient ways to distribute expensive cancer drugs.

Panelists discussing quality metrics in oncology were not sure payment and federal policies could keep pace with what's happening on the front lines.

CMS has attempted to tailor ACOs to meet a variety of needs and levels of risk, depending on where parties are in their knowledge level of payment reform.

By monitoring for mutations in the circulating tumor DNA of melanoma patients undergoing treatment, researchers at Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute are confident they can predict how patients will respond to their treatment and whether their disease would relapse.

Yousuf Zafar, MD, MHS, found that most cancer patients would like to discuss financial concerns with their doctors, but few actually do, for a variety of reasons.

Flatiron Health seeks to use data to prevent the patient experience from being lost.

The pharmacy benefit manager may be the "new sheriff in town" in an era of rising costs.

The top managed care stories this week include a cost-sharing roundtable, an AARP study on rising drug prices for seniors, research on waste in cancer drugs, and HHS released new rules for the health insurance marketplaces.

Just 2 days after being rejected by cost regulators in the UK, ibrutinib has been approved for the frontline treatment of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in the United States.

To discuss the challenges with the implementation of value tools, the Association of Community Cancer Centers invited a panel of experts during its 42nd annual meeting on policy, value, and quality in Washington, DC.

Choosing a therapy with fewer side effects can increase efficacy because patients stick with it, said Stacey McCullough, PharmD, of Tennessee Oncology.

Immunotherapy represents the "next frontier" in cancer care, according to Joseph Alvarnas, MD, of City of Hope, who is editor-in-chief of Evidence-Based Oncology.

After being diagnosed with a rare blood cancer, Jack Whelan has used his electronic connections to be more involved in his care.

The is a wide variation across the country between hospitals using costly positron emission tomography scans for follow-up care for survivors of lung and esophageal cancers.

At Cancerscape, the Association of Community Cancer Center’s 42nd annual meeting on policy, value, and quality, Kavita Patel, MD, MS, spoke about the clinical imperatives of personalized medicine and the demonstration of value to all stakeholders.

Broad treatment guidelines may be based on relatively narrow trial data.

Oncologists now face a cost discussion that was not part of their medical training. It's a balancing act between the big picture of understanding the burdens on the system and "the patient in front of you."

Keynote speaker Dr Julie Vose said the oncologist faces many administrative burdens in the transition to value-based care. Solving them is essential to spending more time with the patient.

Two studies presented at the recently concluded 2016 Quality Care Symposium, hosted by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, proved that hospital-based palliative care programs achieve their proposed objectives.

The timely panel took place just after FDA issued a report on why it feels regulatory oversight of testing is necessary.

A thorough family history is the foundation of precision medicine, according to the 2015 president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors.

Imbruvica, developed by Janssen for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia who are unsuitable to receive chemo-immunotherapy, has been rejected by UK’s National Institute of Health and Care Excellence.

Emanuel F. Petricoin III, PhD, said patients have much to gain from "democratization" as clinical trials move beyond academic centers.

The authors said the incidence rates in type 1 diabetes compared with type 2 show that insulin treatment is not to blame for increased cancer rates.

The pharmaceutical industry needs to rethink its approach to packaging cancer drugs into a one-size vial to avoid drug wastage and save over $1.7 billion in 2016.

What we're reading, March 1, 2016: physicians greet Merck's new hepatitis C drug with caution; 20% of Puerto Ricans could be infected with the Zika virus in 2016; and nearly $3 billion wasted in cancer medicines.

The event saw participation by patient advocacy groups, health economists, health policy researchers, and patient advocacy groups-the primary interest of the participants was to identify the healthcare-associated economic hardships faced by patients and their caregivers across therapeutic areas and discuss potential solutions that could help alleviate some of this burden.

Research led by investigators at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center has concluded that adjuvant chemotherapy improved survival compared with patients who received adjuvant chemoradiation in pancreatic cancer.

The top stories in managed care this week include findings on cancer survival disparities, CVS Health claimed drug spending growth slowed in 2015, and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey's OMNIA plan is interfering with existing patient-centered medical homes.

A new proposal from researchers at MIT and Dana-Farber offers a remedy for patients to cover high healthcare costs: securitized consumer healthcare loans.