Mary Caffrey

Today, CMS unveiled its plan for a successor to the Oncology Care Model (OCM), its ambitious foray into value-based care delivery that has been credited with changing the landscape for patients with cancer, even if it received mixed reviews on achieving savings in its early years.

Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, executive vice president of Texas Oncology, discusses the path of telemedicine reimbursement during the pandemic and possible ways it will change after the pandemic.

Why "tech-enabled" solutions make sense and how the Music City became the a health care hub.

Oncologist and health tech veteran Bobby Green, MD, who practiced for 17 years in Florida and was previously with Flatiron, is now Thyme Care’s president and chief medical officer. He has relocated to Nashville, Tennessee, to launch Thyme Care.

The Institute of Value-Based Medicine® (IVBM), hosted by Tennessee Oncology, brought health care leaders together on April 21 in Nashville, Tennessee, to discuss oncology care delivery—and to see colleagues in person, some for the first time since 2020.

Miruna Sasu, PhD, MBA, became president and CEO of COTA Healthcare in March 2022, not quite a year after joining the company as its chief strategy officer. As the importance of RWD grows, Sasu is ready to take its use in precision oncology to new levels. She spoke with Evidence-Based Oncology™ (EBO) about her new role.

Nathan H. Walcker, MBA, CEO of Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute (FCS) since August 2020, discusses the future of value-based care for the practice as the Oncology Care Model comes to an end.

Four experts from The US Oncology Network partnered with The American Journal of Managed Care® to present a webinar, “Beyond the OCM: How Are Commercial Payers & Employers Delivering Value-Based Cancer Care?”

The study, published in Current Medical Research and Opinion, finds that females were 22% more likely than males to have long COVID, which was defined as having symptoms that lasted more than 4 weeks after onset.

Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, executive vice president of Texas Oncology, discusses how enhancements to telemedicine precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic have made lasting and meaningful changes to oncology care, including that these care improvements will persist post pandemic.

Anita Kumar, MD, medical oncologist with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, led a session at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), on New Directions in Mantle Cell Lymphoma.

Hope S. Rugo, MD, FASCO, is professor of medicine and the director of the Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials Education program at the University of California San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. She discusses her experience with palbociclib and letrozole in advanced breast cancer.

In a panel discussion, “Banner|Aetna: Collaboration as a Business Imperative,” part of the Matters in Managed Care webinar series, panelists discussed how payers and providers can work as partners to deliver care with aligned financial interests.

As part of its inquiry, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will demand that the 6 largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) submit records and answer questions regarding their business practices.

The results involve a pair of DNA medicines combined with cemiplimab, which is approved as Libtayo to treat other solid tumors. In this study, the regimen is designed to prime a T-cell response before a patient receives radiation.

Kim A. Reiss, MD, assistant program director of the Hematology/Oncology Fellowship Program and assistant professor of medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, discusses pancreatic cancer research she presented at the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

Joel W. Neal, MD, PhD, associate professor, Division of Oncology, Stanford Cancer Institute, is lead investigator on the COSMIC-021 trial, which is investigating cabozantinib plus atezolizumab vs cabozantinib alone in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) as a possible second-line treatment beyond chemotherapy.

Results presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting showed a 21.4-month advantage for autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) over a common triplet therapy in progression-free survival (PFS) but no advantage in overall survival (OS).

Practice-changing data from the DESTINY-Breast04 study, presented during the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, show that trastuzumab deruxtecan reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 50% compared with chemotherapy for human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2)–low patients with both hormone receptor (HR)–positive and HR-negative disease.

Thanos Zomas, MD, global medical lead, Lymphoma and Leukemia, and global medical lead, Adcetris Program, at Takeda Oncology discusses updated results from the ECHELON-1 study.

David R. Penberthy, MD, MBA, is medical director, Radiation Oncology, Bon Secours-Southside Medical Center in Petersburg, Virginia, and president of the Association of Community Cancer Centers for the 2022-2023 term.

TROPiCS-02, a phase 3 study, was presented during a session on breast cancer at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Kashyap Patel, MD, CEO of Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates, current president of the Community Oncology Alliance, and associate editor of Evidence-Based Oncology™, discusses his partnership with Sema4 and LabCorp and their joint goal to advance whole-exome sequencing (WES) for targeted oncology treatment.

Enrique Ocio, MD, PhD, hematology department head, Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital, Santander, Spain, discusses phase 1b trial results for subcutaneous (sub-Q) vs intravenous isatuximab, both formulations administered in combination with pomalidomide and dexamethasone for relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (RRMM).

The collaboration, put in place through a Memorandum of Understanding, was presented Saturday in a keynote address by WHO Cancer Control Officer André Ilbawi, MD, during the presidential symposium at the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting taking place in Chicago.

Data presented at ASCO show that after 6 years, patients with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma who were treated with a combination of brentuximab vedotin and chemotherapy had a sharply reduced risk of death and a reduced risk of a secondary cancer.

Findings from the phase 3 SHINE trial could make ibrutinib the standard treatment option for older patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), who often cannot tolerate chemotherapy or transplant strategies, according to study authors.

For the second year, the meeting will focus on health equity, as American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) President Everett Vokes, MD, FASCO, has selected the theme “Advancing Equitable Cancer Care Through Innovation.”

Randall A. Oyer, MD, medical director, oncology, and medical director, Cancer Risk Evaluation Program, Lancaster General Health, and clinical professor of cancer biology at Penn Medicine, discusses the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology/Association of Community Cancer Centers recommendations for improving diversity in clinical trials.

Kashyap Patel, MD, CEO of Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates, current president of the Community Oncology Alliance, and associate editor of Evidence-Based Oncology™, talks with us ahead of the 2022 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.