Oncology

"We want to make sure practices have time to learn, understand, adapt, and modify, to a new Oncology Care Model," said Michael Diaz, MD, president of Community Oncology Alliance.

Racial and ethnic biases held by research and clinical professionals could contribute to low minority participation in oncology clinical trials, according to a study recently published in Cancer, a journal from the American Cancer Society.

We think that the ACCC is uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between the needs in clinical trials and the patients who are in the community. Most clinical oncology is delivered in the community. That's where the patients are, that's where the need is, said Randall Oyer, MD, medical director of the Oncology Program at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health and president of ACCC.

There has been significant improvement in payers' understanding of site of care issues, but steps still need to be taken to address these issues, said Lucio Gordan, MD, president and managing physician at Florida Cancer Specialists.

Ensuring that all frontline clinicians are equipped, confident, and engaged in executing skilled communication, which is at the core of palliative care, will make a significant difference for how value-based care unfolds, how payment reform happens, and how the lived experience plays out for patients and families to be a better one, said Rebecca Kirch, JD, executive vice president, Health Care, Quality and Value, National Patient Advocate Foundation.

I think a lot of it is, do you trust the people that you're going to be working with? What does it come down to economically? And then I would say on the third end is what can really be done to enhance patient care? As it relates to the decision that you make, said Bradley Prechtl, MBA, chief executive officer of the American Oncology Network.

This week’s selection was one of our most-read articles of 2018.

The authors said their study is the first to show that targeted treaments for patients with certain molecular alterations could be a possibility in pancreatic cancer.

My Presidential theme was to look at the interdisciplinary care team involved in the actual delivery of cancer therapies and cancer care, said Ali McBride, PharmD, MS, BCPS, BCOP, clinical coordinator of hematology/oncology in the Department of Pharmacy at The University of Arizona Cancer Center and outgoing president of ACCC.

There are many applications that are available today that could be brought into the oncology landscape to create a much more patient-centered focus of experiences for those undergoing care, said Susan Dentzer, senior policy fellow at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy.

How can community oncology practices keep up with changing federal regulations and the constant fl ow of new scientific evidence, while delivering quality care in the era of payment reform? The answer, said panelists at Patient-Centered Oncology Care®, is to stay independent by working together.

https://www.pharmacytimes.org/on-demand/managed-care-considerations-for-navigating-biosimilar-and-her2-directed-therapies-for-the-treatment-of-her2-positive-breast-cancer

During a discussion at The American Journal of Managed Care®’s Patient- Centered Oncology Care® meeting in Philadelphia, panelists outlined the efficacy of the 2 FDA-approved therapies, Medicare reimbursement for CAR T-cell therapies, and the pace of innovation in healthcare.

With our current issue of Evidence-Based Oncology™ focusing on clinical pathways in cancer care, we look back at one of our most-read papers of 2016.

The decline can be attributed to long-term drops in death rates for the 4 major cancers—lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate.

Dr Alvarnas is editor-in-chief of Evidence-Based Oncology.™ He is vice president of Government Affairs, senior medical director for Employer Strategy, and associate clinical professor, Hematology & Hematologic Cell Transplantation, City of Hope, Duarte, Califonia.

As cancer care becomes more complex and more expensive, decision-support algorithms offer a mechanism to define best practice, reduce unwarranted variation, and control costs across growing networks.

This week, top managed care stories included survey results on oncology practices’ willingness to take on risk; a warning of flu among children in detention centers; study findings establishing a link between circadian rhythm and type 2 diabetes.

From a value-based medicine perspective, we think there's no greater value in the healthcare system than improving survival for cancer patients and reducing the costs of treating late stage cancer; we believe the GRAIL test could be the test case for how to make this transition, said Joshua Ofman, MD, MSHS, chief of Corporate Strategy and External Affairs at GRAIL Inc.

This population-based analysis of patients with cancer in California found significant differences in proton beam therapy use by health insurance type, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

Schonherz will be responsible for day-to-day operations.

CMS said it is expanding coverage of next generation sequencing (NGS) for use as a diagnostic for patients with germline breast and ovarian cancer, paving the way for Medicare beneficiaries to receive more personalized medicine. However, an advocate said the wording of CMS' decision could actually limit testing access for some women with breast or ovarian cancer.

Blue Cross Blue Shield utilizes data to drive insights into what works and what doesn't work in cancer care, as well as, delineating trends through our collaboration with provider specialties and organizations across the US, said Jennifer Atkins, MBA, vice president of Network Solutions at Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Testicular cancer is the most common cancer to be diagnosed in men as younger men—those younger than age 40—and it can be particularly aggressive. Advances in therapy have improved survival rates, but if young men have chemotherapy after surgery, they may live with side effects for decades.

Five issues in healthcare were spotlighted as key developments to watch; FDA to ban all e-cig vape flavors except for menthol and tobacco; Google AI system shown to improve detection of breast cancer through mammograms.

A team at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston led by original pioneers in immuno-oncology have published a paper in Nature Medicine that discusses an immune-suppressing enzyme that was strongly present in glioblastoma but not in 5 other tumor types the team studied.

For more than 45 years, the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer has been working tirelessly toward a world without lung and other thoracic cancers. To add strength to our efforts we recently joined with other leading organizations in the lung cancer space to create a powerful force for change: The Lung Ambition Alliance