- Center on Health Equity and Access
- Clinical
- Health Care Cost
- Health Care Delivery
- Insurance
- Policy
- Technology
- Value-Based Care
Making Cancer Care More Affordable
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore suggest that controlling the costs to treat cancer without increasing risk to patients requires a collaborative approach.
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore suggest that controlling the costs to treat cancer without increasing risk to patients requires a collaborative approach.
“We argue that the FDA, Medicare, insurance companies, the public, and the pharmaceutical companies have to come to some agreement. Competitive bidding by hospitals and health systems should be used to drive prices lower,” say researchers Ronan J. Kelly, MD, MBA, and Thomas J. Smith, MD. “We are sympathetic to drug companies that want to charge enough to generate enough return of the cost of investigation, but we need transparency regarding the cost of development. Some drugs can cost a billion to develop, perhaps, but not every one. There has to be some way to relate the price of the drug to the value of the drug. And we have to set limits.”
Drs Kelly and Smith add that hospitalization, imaging, and drug costs can all specifically be targeted.
Medical imaging such as positron emission tomography—or PET scans—while helpful, have not been shown to provide any more effective benefits or results than other less-costly examinations. As well, services such as hospice care can provide better care and quality of life at lower costs than hospitalization. In particular, however, they suggest that addressing drug costs will be the most essential.
“We'll get to a situation where only the richest of the rich can afford these drugs, and we will have a lot of people looking on from the sidelines,” say the researchers.
“There are drugs that cost tens of thousands of dollars with an unbalanced relationship between cost and benefit. We need to determine appropriate prices for drugs and inform patients about their costs of care,” explains Dr Smith.
Cancer drug spending is projected to increase nearly 40% by 2020 as new diagnoses of the disease in the United States continue to increase. Such trends require healthcare stakeholders to change practice patterns and to think more cost-effectively.
Around the Web
Three Ways to Make Cancer Care More Affordable [National Geographic]
US Cancer Care Researchers Say "Cut Drug Prices" [PharmaTimes]
The Joint Commission is launching the Rural Health Clinic Accreditation Program to standardize staff training and patient care practices at rural health clinics nationwide; the American Cancer Society recently launched the largest-ever study of cancer risk and outcomes in Black women; the HHS COVID-19 vaccination campaign saved $732 billion by preventing illness and related costs.
Read More
Examining Low-Value Cancer Care Trends Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic
April 25th 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with the authors of a study published in the April 2024 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® about their findings on the rates of low-value cancer care services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Listen
Oncology Onward: A Conversation With Penn Medicine's Dr Justin Bekelman
December 19th 2023Justin Bekelman, MD, director of the Penn Center for Cancer Care Innovation, sat with our hosts Emeline Aviki, MD, MBA, and Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, for our final episode of 2023 to discuss the importance of collaboration between academic medicine and community oncology and testing innovative cancer care delivery in these settings.
Listen
