Mary Caffrey is the Executive Editor for The American Journal of Managed Care® (AJMC®). She joined AJMC® in 2013 and is the primary staff editor for Evidence-Based Oncology, the multistakeholder publication that reaches 22,000+ oncology providers, policy makers and formulary decision makers. She is also part of the team that oversees speaker recruitment and panel preparations for AJMC®'s premier annual oncology meeting, Patient-Centered Oncology Care®. For more than a decade, Mary has covered ASCO, ASH, ACC and other leading scientific meetings for AJMC readers.
Mary has a BA in communications and philosophy from Loyola University New Orleans. You can connect with Mary on LinkedIn.
Dr Kenneth Cohen Discusses COVID-19 Impact on Low-Value Care
January 17th 2022Kenneth Cohen, MD, FACP, executive director of clinical research at UnitedHealth Group Research and Development and senior national medical director at OptumCare, explains why low-value care still exists and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the issue.
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Interview: Real-World Data Show Daratumumab 1L Improves OS in Some Patients With MM
January 11th 2022For patients with multiple myeloma (MM) who are not eligible for transplant, should novel treatments be used right away? Or should clinicians save the best potential therapies for relapses, which are inevitable with this disease?
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Blue Ridge Cancer Care’s Goldschmidt Presents Data on Managing Hematological Events
January 9th 2022Studies have shown that administering trilaciclib prior to chemotherapy can reduce myelosuppression and improve health-related quality of life. Jerome Goldschmidt, MD, said future studies will look at how it interacts with immunotherapy.
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Dr Steven Pergam Describes Evolving COVID-19 Recommendations for Cancer Community
January 9th 2022Steven Pergam, MD, MPH, director of infection prevention at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and infectious disease physician at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, describes the shifts in COVID-19 recommendations for patients with cancer and those receiving CAR T-cell therapy.
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Dr Steven Pergam Discusses NCCN's Preference for mRNA Vaccines
January 7th 2022Steven Pergam, MD, MPH, director of infection prevention at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and infectious disease physician at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discusses the National Comprehensive Cancer Network's (NCCN) preference for mRNA vaccines and how they work differently.
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Dr Kenneth Cohen: Change in Reimbursement Model Required to Reduce Low-Value Care
January 6th 2022Kenneth Cohen, MD, FACP, executive director of clinical research at UnitedHealth Group Research and Development and senior national medical director at OptumCare, describes the main challenges to identifying, measuring, and reducing use of low-value care and the granular data needed to solve these challenges.
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Dr Steven Pergam Explains NCCN COVID-19 Update
January 5th 2022Steven Pergam, MD, MPH, director of infection prevention at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and infectious disease physician at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, explains the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) update on COVID-19 vaccines and prevention.
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Dr Adriaan Voors: Health Care Reimbursement May Affect SGLT2 Inhibitor Uptake
December 24th 2021Adriaan Voors, MD, professor of cardiology and director of the Heart Failure Clinic, University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands, explains why patients provided sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors in hospitals may be unable to continue the medication after discharge.
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Precision Medicine Can Close Oncology Gaps—and Lead to “Doing Less”
December 20th 2021Physicians said it is in payers’ interest to use artificial intelligence to address social determinants of health, to cover tests, and to gather data. Doing so could let them stratify who needs certain screenings and diagnostic procedures and who doesn’t, which could lead to less consumption of health care.
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In Oncology, Navigating PBMs Starts With Knowing What’s in the Contract
December 20th 2021Vertical integration of payers and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) took flight with the mergers of Aetna and CVS Health and of Cigna and ExpressScripts. Panelists at Patient-Centered Oncology Care® said the shift has filtered down to affect access at the practice level.
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OneOncology Speakers Make Case for Community Setting in Research, Value Delivery
December 20th 2021Duncan Allen, MHA, introduced the audience to the OneR clinical research initiative, and Jeffrey Patton, MD, discussed how the hospital transparency law has bolstered the case for the value of community oncology.
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Leveraging Data and AI to Connect the Life Sciences, Health Systems
December 20th 2021Today’s challenge, according to Microsoft's Iksha Herr, MS, is learning how to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to process the waves of health care data and to drive insights that lead to better care delivery.
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Stronger Community Connections, Fewer Barriers Are Keys to Better Trials
December 19th 2021Bruce A. Feinberg, DO, of Cardinal Health Specialty Solutions, leads a panel discussion on how far randomized clinical trials have come, how they could be better, and how using real-world evidence could make research more representative of the population.
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Most Medicare Beneficiaries With CLL Diagnosis Don’t Get Therapy, Claims Analysis Finds
December 13th 2021Two-third of those who receive a chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) diagnosis are age 65 or older, so the ease with which drugs are covered in Medicare has an outsized role in patient access to care.
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ZUMA-7: Axi-Cel in Second Line Is the “New Standard” in R/R LBCL, Locke Says
December 13th 2021Frederick L. Locke, MD, of Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, is the lead study author of the phase 3 ZUMA-7 trial, which examined the use of axi-cel in second-line treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma (R/R LBCL).
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Racial Disparities Seen in Survival Among Pediatric Patients With Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
December 11th 2021Sumit Gupta, MD, of The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, told attendees at the 63rd Annual American Society of Hematology Meeting that biological or genetic factors accounted for some of the gap in survival rates, but not all.
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Liso-Cel Offers “Breakthrough” in Second-Line Treatment of LBCL, Kamdar Says
December 11th 2021Results presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology show significant benefits in event-free survival, progression-free survival, and complete response over standard of care.
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