• Center on Health Equity and Access
  • Clinical
  • Health Care Cost
  • Health Care Delivery
  • Insurance
  • Policy
  • Technology
  • Value-Based Care

Dr Joseph Alvarnas Addresses Rising Medical Costs

Video

Healthcare practitioners are well aware that the rising cost of medical advances may affect their ability to deliver great care to all their patients, but there are ways they can address the issue, said Joseph Alvarnas, MD, the editor-in-chief of Evidence-Based Oncology.

Healthcare practitioners are well aware that the rising cost of medical advances may affect their ability to deliver great care to all their patients, but there are ways they can address the issue, said Joseph Alvarnas, MD, the editor-in-chief of Evidence-Based Oncology.

Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

How can patients and clinicians balance new innovations in cancer care with the skyrocketing costs of those innovations?

That's a real interesting challenge. And it's very hard: this idea that as medicine moves forward it becomes profoundly more expensive is something that practitioners realize may at some point upend our ability to deliver great care to all of our patients. So what we try to do is be mindful of how we use medications, to ensure we use the right medication for the right patient based upon their risk, and based upon their specific clinical needs.

And I think to the extent that we can be stewards of best practice that it will lead us toward a greater potential for the sustainability of the healthcare system, including having those new pharmaceuticals available. Over time I think globally, the US, will have to address the issue of high-dollar pharmaceuticals, and whether there may be avenues toward addressing those that are most egregiously overpriced.

Related Videos
Rashon Lane, PhD, MA
Dr Julie Patterson, National Pharmaceutical Council
Diana Isaacs, PharmD
Beau Raymond, MD
Binod Dhakal, MD, Medical College of Wisconsin, lead CARTITUDE-4 investigator
Dr Sophia Humphreys
Robert Zimmerman, MD
Shawn Tuma, JD, CIPP/US, cybersecurity and data privacy attorney, Spencer Fane LLP
Ryan Stice, PharmD
Related Content
© 2024 MJH Life Sciences
AJMC®
All rights reserved.