April 2018

Dr Alvarnas is editor-in-chief and director of Value-Based Analytics at City of Hope, Duarte, California.

ASCO reviews clinical pathways; Flatiron Health acquired

Coverage from the Association of Community Cancer Centers’ 44th Annual Meeting & Cancer Center Business Summit, March 14-16, 2018, in Washington, DC.

Coverage from the American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, held February 8-10, 2018, in San Francisco, California

One possible way to reduce overall cost, improve patient experience, and improve outcomes in cancer care is to shift the focus of healthcare delivery away from volume and toward value. Patient-centered cancer care holds the promise of addressing these issues.

Oncology nurse navigators provide the “constant” in what seem to be undulating waves of changes to workflows, the adoption of new technology, the near-weekly onslaught of new drugs, and the need to ensure every nuance of documentation is entered in discrete fields in electronic health records so the practice meets reporting requirements.

It is important to establish broadly agreed-on and accepted frameworks for thinking about the value of high-cost cancer therapies, so that we as a society can weigh the choices in front of us.

Risk has very different meanings depending on whether one views it from a clinical or financial perspective.