Latest Conference Articles

While utilization management in general is a pain point for everyone, it’s a necessary evil in the United States, where we spend 18% of our gross domestic product on healthcare, explained Debra Patt, MD, MPH, MBA, vice president, policy and strategy, Texas Oncology; medical director, analytics, McKesson Specialty Health, during a session at the 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois.

In order for precision oncology to be fruitful and to be effective, we need interoperability and we need to be able to share patient data, said James Lin Chen, MD, Ohio State University, and chair of ASCO CancerLinQ Oncology Informatics Task Force.

Ellen Miller Sonet, MBA, JD, chief strategy and policy officer, CancerCare, discusses the financial burden cancer patients face and how novel therapies and next-generation sequencing impact the burden.

Leading global experts believe that for immunotherapy to work in glioblastoma—which has an estimated 5-year survival rate of 33% in the United States—combination treatments are the way forward.

The ability to create health information technology tools is happening much faster than the ability to figure out what to do with them, explained Peter Paul Yu, MD, FASCO, FACP, physician-in-chief, Hartford HealthCare Cancer Center.

At the 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, June 1-5, Chicago, Illinois, Noopur S. Raje, MD, director, Center for Multiple Myeloma, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, presented results from the phase 1 multicenter study with a second-generation chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy called bb2121.

There is going to be an increased use of next generation sequencing testing, and the challenge is going to be to figure out when and how, said Leonard B. Saltz, MD, executive director of Clinical Value and Sustainability, head of Colorectal Oncology Section, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

The latest version of FDA's patient-focused drug development initiative is trying to gather patient perspectives in a systematic way, but the effort faces the challenge of understanding the spectrum of those perspectives, said Mark Fleury, PhD, MS, principal of Policy Development and Emerging Science at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN).

A phase 3 study, conducted by the Children’s Oncology Group among children and young adults between ages 1 and 30 diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia or T-cell lymphoblastic leukemia, has found a 90% survival rate at 4 years posttreatment initiation—84% of these patients were declared cancer free at that point in their treatment trajectory. Results from this study will be presented at the 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, June 1-5, in Chicago, Illinois.

Asking 2 simple questions of all patients would give care coordinators all the information they need to provide truly patient-centered care, said Barbara Tofani, RN, MSN, NEA-BC, administrative director of the Hunterdon Regional Cancer Center.

Screening patients for financial distress remains a challenge, but it’s important to find those patients early and start financial planning discussions immediately, said oncology financial navigator Clara Lambert, BBA, OPN-CG, chair of the Association of Community Cancer Centers' Financial Advocacy Network Advisory Committee.

A retrospective analysis conducted by researchers at the University of Louisville has found that less than 2% of the more than 7.5 million eligible smokers were screened for lung cancer in 2016 despite recommendations by the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). These results will be presented at the 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, June 1-5, Chicago, Illinois.

Electronic health records, interoperability, and quality measures are the biggest stressors causing clinician burnout, said Kathleen Blake, MD, MPH, vice president for Performance Improvement at the American Medical Association.

Mary Norine Walsh, MD, immediate past president of the American College of Cardiology, discusses the risks for pregnant women with hypertension.

Use of the mobile and sensor technology, CYCORE—CYberinfrastructure for COmparative Effectiveness Research—to remotely monitor symptoms in patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) undergoing radiation therapy found CYCORE patients had lower symptoms overall and specific to HNC. These results are a part of the research to be presented at the upcoming 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, June 1-5, Chicago, Illinois.

It is important to have financial discussions early and often with patients and framing the conversation in the right way, said Yousuf Zafar, MD, MHS, of the Duke Cancer Institute and a member of the Association of Community Cancer Centers Financial Advocacy Network Advisory Committee.

Without data, research on efforts, and an understanding of the local resources, addressing social determinants of health in a meaningful way won’t be possible.

During a press cast hosted by the American Society of Clinical Oncology ahead of the annual meeting, women with HER2-positive early-stage breast cancer who were treated with trastuzumab (Herceptin) for 6 months had a similar rate of disease-free survival as women who received the drug for 12 months, which is the current standard of care.

Curtis Lowery, MD, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and director of the Center for Distance Health, talks about the ANGELS program that he founded at his practice and the benefit it provides to patients.

In general, practices and health systems don’t do a good job of integrating technology into practice, partly because most of the technology they use isn’t well suited to their needs, explained Charles Saunders, MD, CEO of Integra Connect.

Success for integrated cancer care teams rely on a few things, such as having a champion, commitment, and strong communication, explained Thomas Asfeldt, MBA, RN, director of Outpatient Cancer Services at Sanford Cancer Center.

Healthcare is experiencing something fundamentally different with nontraditional mergers across industries, explained Ted Okon, executive director of COA, at the 2018 Community Oncology Conference.

There's the potential for new nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and multiple sclerosis drugs to be approved in 2019, said Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, a senior clinical consultant in Emerging Therapeutics for Express Scripts.

Donna Hansel, MD, PhD, of University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, explains her use of human bladder cancer cells in her research.

Guidelines can help address issues of cost and variation, especially in complex diseases, said Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD, FACP, FRACP, president, Carolinas HealthCare System's Levine Cancer Institute.

Pharmaceutical companies have helped in the shift to value-based care through value-based prices, as well as outcomes- and performance-based risk-sharing contracts, explained Robert Navarro, PharmD, clinical professor, College of Pharmacy, University of Florida.

Technology can be used to make it easier for patients and practices to participate in clinical trials, while also easing some of the burden on research staff, said James Hamrick, MD, MPH, Kaiser Permanente and Flatiron Health.

The endgame for both the health system and the payer is always the patient, so we try to focus on treating patients in the most cost-effective manner with the most clinically appropriate evidence-based approach, explained Ashley Pappas, PharmD, MHA, assistant director of pharmacy, University of North Carolina Hospitals.

Burnout among physicians is only getting worse, but there are ways an organization can put a program in place to address or even prevent burnout, said James Grayson, administrative chief of staff at West Cancer Center.

As new treatments come to market that have a substantial impact on diseases, or even cure them, the healthcare system is facing the challenge of how to value these treatments. A panel of experts highlighted what evidence there needs to be, methods of valuing therapies, and the ethical implications of having cures.