Interviews

As expensive precision medicines come to market, employers are willing to cover the costs if these medicines are shown to work and improve patient experience or outcome, said Neil Goldfarb, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Philadelphia Business Group on Health.

Physician, patient, and caregiver education is important to improve diabetes care, said Jaime A. Davidson, MD, FACP, MACE, professor of medicine, Touchstone Diabetes Center, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Identifying which treatments for multiple sclerosis have the most promise is challenging because there are no head-to-head studies comparing treatments and what's promising for one clinician is different than what's promising for another clinician, explained June Halper, MSN, APN-C, MSCN, FAAN, chief executive officer, Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers.

While the health system transitions to value-based care, it can learn a lot of lessons from HIV care delivery, said Stella A. Safo, MD, assistant professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The healthcare system has a long way to go to make voluntary payment models more attractive before it can consider making payment models mandatory, said Travis Broome, vice president of policy at Aledade.

New innovations in cancer therapies have people excited to leave behind the treatments of old, but it might not be time yet to throw away chemotherapy, said Bruce Feinberg, DO, vice president and chief medical officer of Cardinal Health Specialty Solutions.

Given the limitations of the quality-adjusted life year (QALY) measure, Eleanor M. Perfetto, PhD, MS, senior vice president of Strategic Initiatives for the National Health Council, outlines concerns with using the measure as the basis for coverage decisions.

There are a lot of factors that should be considered when choosing a therapy for a patient with multiple sclerosis, including the patient profile, the patient’s lifestyle, and the efficacy of the therapy, said Mark Freedman, MD, MSc, professor of medicine in neurology at the University of Ottawa, director of the Multiple Sclerosis Research Unit, at Ottawa Hospital-General Campus, and senior scientists in the neuroscience program at Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.

Abraham Nagy, MD, chair of neurology at University of Las Vegas and director of Nevada Headache Institute discusses how better lifestyle choices can improve headaches.

With more than 30 million patients with diabetes and only 6000 endocrinologists, that primary care doctor is playing a crucial role in seeing diabetics, said Jaime A. Davidson, MD, FACP, MACE, professor of medicine, Touchstone Diabetes Center, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Shoshana Lipson, a patient advocate and founder of the “CGRP & Migraine Community ” on Facebook explains what she sees as the biggest takeaways from the migraine peer exchange that she participated in.

If chemotherapy is still going to be used for another decade, there needs to be continued research into it and how to improve quality of life for patients treated with it, said Bruce Feinberg, DO, vice president and chief medical officer of Cardinal Health Specialty Solutions.

It's important to have different metrics when it comes to cost containment because some patients are just sicker than others, explained Stella A. Safo, MD, assistant professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Diabetes is a self-managed disease, which makes the role of diabetes education crucial in order for patients to succeed in managing their disease, said Kellie Rodriguez, RN, MSN, MBA, CDE, director, Global Diabetes Program, Parkland Health & Hospital System.

A new blood test being worked on can detect 8 common cancer types in a way that is less invasive than other tests, said Jeanne Tie, MBChB, FRACP, MD, medical oncologist and associate professor at the Walter+Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.

Paul Melmeyer, director of Federal Policy, National Organization for Rare Disorders, discusses factors that have historically been underrepresented in value assessment frameworks for rare disease therapies.

Aledade and Aetna are partnering to bring population health to patients and greater accountability of total cost of care to providers, said Travis Broome, vice president of policy at Aledade.

The biggest clinical challenges that we have in treating multiple sclerosis are 2-fold, explained June Halper, MSN, APN-C, MSCN, FAAN, chief executive officer, Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers.

Thomas Marsland, MD, medical oncologist, discusses his take on the CAR T-cell therapy reimbursement plan put forward by CMS.

Stephen Silberstein, MD, director of the Jefferson Headache Center, discusses patient reactions to being prescribed a CGRP inhibitor.

Joann Sciandra, RN, BSN, CCM, associate vice president of healthcare management, Geisinger Health System, discusses which technologies are having the biggest impact for accountable care organizations (ACOs) in better managing the needs of their patients.

Collaboration between cardiologists and endocrinologists are necessary when caring with patients with diabetes who have had cardiovascular issues in the past, said Jaime A. Davidson, MD, FACP, MACE, professor of medicine, Touchstone Diabetes Center, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Is chemotherapy really on its way out? Maybe not, said Bruce Feinberg, DO, vice president and chief medical officer of Cardinal Health Specialty Solutions.

Diabetes educators can help patients with diabetes who face financial challenges make appropriate choices and receive assistance to afford medications, said Kellie Rodriguez, RN, MSN, MBA, CDE, director, Global Diabetes Program, Parkland Health & Hospital System.

HIV care delivery has always had an ethos in it of really being based on a team-based approach, explained Stella A. Safo, MD, assistant professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Genetic testing and understanding family history of cancer is important because more and more targeted therapies are coming out that are designed to work with specific mutations or inherited forms of mutations, said Sue Friedman, DVM, executive director of FORCE: Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered.

There is generally a greater willingness to pay among just about everybody for rare disease therapies, explained Paul Melmeyer, director of Federal Policy, National Organization for Rare Disorders.

The Oncology Care Model (OCM) is pushing cancer centers and cancer programs to make the changes they knew were needed to improve care delivery and patient experiences, said David Ortiz, OCM program director at Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care.