- Center on Health Equity & Access
- Clinical
- Health Care Cost
- Health Care Delivery
- Insurance
- Policy
- Technology
- Value-Based Care
Dr Timothy Murphy Discusses How COVID-19 Has Affected Lung Cancer Screening
Timothy Murphy, MD, FACP, practice president of Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, spoke with The American Journal of Managed Care® about the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on screening for lung cancer.
Timothy Murphy, MD, FACP, practice president of Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, spoke with The American Journal of Managed Care® about the effect of the pandemic on screening for lung cancer.
Transcript
What impact did COVID-19 and the delay in diagnosis have on the patients with lung cancer who are coming into cancer practices now?
COVID-19 created a significant delay in diagnoses, not just in lung cancer but essentially all cancers across the board is what the data is looking like during the 2 quarters in 2020 where essentially everything was shut down. So, the rate of screening for lung cancer essentially went to zero, and what we're finding now that the system is open and back up and running, we're not getting the same amount of people coming in.
There was a real hesitancy during the end of 2020 and really into 2021 of people going back to the centers to get screened. So, we are not back to prepandemic levels of screening, and more importantly, and rather tragically, the cancers we are now diagnosing, specifically lung cancer, do appear to be in a later stage, likely as a result in the delay of that screening.
Contributor: For Complex Cases, Continuity in Acute Care Is Necessary
April 23rd 2025For patients with complex needs and social challenges like unstable housing, the hospital has become their de facto medical home—yet each visit is a fragmented restart, without continuity, context, or a clear path forward.
Read More
New Research Challenges Assumptions About Hospital-Physician Integration, Medicare Patient Mix
April 22nd 2025On this episode of Managed Care Cast, Brady Post, PhD, lead author of a study published in the April 2025 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care®, challenges the claim that hospital-employed physicians serve a more complex patient mix.
Listen
Personalized Care Key as Tirzepatide Use Expands Rapidly
April 15th 2025Using commercial insurance claims data and the US launch of tirzepatide as their dividing point, John Ostrominski, MD, Harvard Medical School, and his team studied trends in the use of both glucose-lowering and weight-lowering medications, comparing outcomes between adults with and without type 2 diabetes.
Listen
