Dr Adam Kittai Emphasizes 2 Crucial Reasons Value-Based Care Is Important for Blood-Based Cancers

Maximizing the value of treatment and ensuring that money is spent wisely are 2 important aspects to consider in value-based care for blood-based cancer, explains Adam Kittai, MD, assistant professor in the division of hematology at The Ohio State University-James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute.

Transcript

Why is value-based care important when treating patients with a blood-based cancer such as leukemia?

I think there are 2 main reasons why value-based care is important here. One, for anyone that has a malignancy, it's important that the patient can derive as much value as they can from the treatment they receive, and with the time that they have. Life is uncertain in any circumstance, and when you are dealing with a serious life event, like cancer, deriving value from what we have is made a very high priority.

Your other reason is cost and waste. As these new drugs are being developed for hematologic malignancies, the cost of cancer is rising exponentially. So, as costs are rising, it puts a significant stress on our health care system overall. It also creates disparities in access to care.

Higher costs also lead to higher wastes, and it's important that we derive as much value as we can from every dollar spent, given money is not an unlimited commodity, allowing us to not only take great care of the patient in front of us, but all but all of society as a whole.

When I think about why value-based care is important when treating patients with a blood-based cancer, I think the 2 main things that I can think of are that we really want to derive as much value of the time that we have and the treatment that we give, and also really think about the cost of the care that we give.