Oncology

Differences in cancer care spending and utilization between Medicare beneficiaries receiving chemotherapy in hospital outpatient departments versus physician offices vary by service type.

Two posters presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting, held May 31 to June 4, 2019, in Chicago, Illinois, discussed the growing issue of financial toxicity and the costs of care in cancer treatment.

The prices of targeted oncology therapies have grown substantially, but revenues have not. This is due in part to large declines in per-drug patient counts.

As new innovations in cancer care reach the market, some people seem ready to move on from chemotherapy, but the treatment will still have a role to play in treating cancer for years, if not decades, to come.

The expanding arsenal of targeted and immuno-oncology drugs has unalterably changed the landscape of systemic cancer treatment, but chemotherapy will remain critical for years if not decades to come.

A pair of study abstracts presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, supported the efficacy of entrectinib among 2 different groups of patients, including patients with a rare form of lung cancer and pediatric and adolescent patients with solid tumors.

Though chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has been largely touted as one of the most important advances in cancer care in recent years, the therapy comes with the risk of severe toxicities as well as increased financial burden due to the high cost of the drugs.

Outlining a set of issues that need to be addressed under the Oncology Care Model (OCM), the Community Oncology Alliance (COA) is urging the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation to delay the October 2019 deadline for practices to transition to 2-sided risk under the model.

“How do you currently collaborate with your primary care colleagues in caring for patients with cancer?” This was how Larissa Nekhlyudov, MD, MPH, opened a session titled “Bringing the Primary Care Physician Back Into Cancer Care,” during the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Annual Meeting, held in Chicago, Illinois from May 31-June 4, 2019.

This is part 3 of a 3-part vaccine series covering the potential of vaccines for infectious diseases, the impact of the antivaccination movement, and the promise of vaccines for cancer treatment. Read part 1 and part 2.

In the first of a series of interviews with key opinion leaders (KOLs), Amy Ellis, director of quality and value-based care at Northwest Medical Specialties, discusses practice transformation with Jess Quiring, a patient navigator at New Mexico Cancer Center.

The median lag time from first-in-human to first-in-child trials of oncology drugs that were ultimately approved by FDA is 6.5 years.

Alliances are going to help community oncology participate in things that, as individual practices, they don‘t have the opportunity to do, said Barry Russo, chief executive officer of The Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders.

With CancerIQ, we’re really going to be helping push population health into the oncology arena where we can hopefully predict and preempt this very costly and devastating disease well in advance, says Feyi Olopade Ayodele, MBA, chief executive officer at CancerIQ.

The Oncology Care Model (OCM) has set off a ripple of change in cancer care that extends beyond the patients who are in the model, said David Ortiz, OCM program director at Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care.