Oncology

A study published in JAMA Oncology found that a significant number of patients newly diagnosed with cancer have had a prior cancer. The prevalence differed among age group and incident cancer type.

Every week, The American Journal of Managed Care® recaps the top managed care news of the week, and you can now listen to it on our podcast, Managed Care Cast.

This week, the top managed care stories included a new rule from CMS to address drug costs for seniors; a campaign to get payers to fund the artificial pancreas is working; and a new survey identifies how Americans prefer to treat pain.

Roche is suing Pfizer to block the company from selling a biosimilar referencing its breast-cancer drug Herceptin in the United States, claiming that the biosimilar infringes on 40 of its patents.

Chemotherapy and radiation therapy should be the first line of treatment for certain prostate cancers and lymphomas with a major genetic weakness, according to researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

An analysis using mixed quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as site visits to 7 US oncology practices, identified 13 attributes within 5 themes that potentially contribute to high-quality care at a relatively low total cost.

The evolution of the navigator role has been an important development in cancer care, according to panelists who offered various perspectives on helping patients along the cancer journey.

With the growing shift to community-based and patient-centered care, the National Quality Forum (NQF) and the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) have launched initiatives to ensure that patients with serious illness receive safe, effective, and high-quality care. At the same time, professionals in the healthcare industry are highlighting the importance of integrating this type of care into the oncology practice.

With an expansion that includes immunotherapy combination treatments, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)’s Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR) Study has now grown to 500 participants and 16 therapies.

High chemotherapy costs are only one reason for the rising cost of cancer care. End-of-life care and hospitalizations are within an oncologist's control and must be better managed given new reimbursement structures.

Authors of the study found that the mean total, chemotherapy, and physician costs were all lower in community settings compared with hospital-based settings for patients with breast, lung, and colorectal cancer. There were also fewer emergency department visits both 3 and 10 days following treatment.

FDA on Thursday authorized a faster approval path for a next-generation sequencing assay developed at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) that represents both a scientific and regulatory breakthrough at the agency.

A mathematical model may help providers better understand which patients will benefit from certain immunotherapy.

Cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitors may have proven benefits for treating metastatic breast cancer, but the therapies are associated with hematological toxicities and febrile neutropenia.