Interviews

The world of value-based purchasing needs to quickly adopt the use of electronic health records and their ability to share data around a single patient, according to Christine K. Cassel, MD, president and CEO of the National Quality Forum.

Bruce Feinberg, DO, vice president and chief medical office at Cardinal Health Specialty Solutions, explains why he attends the sessions at Patient-Centered Oncology Care.

Dana Goldman, PhD, suggests that value for breakthrough therapies is most often associated with health benefits, health economics, and outcomes research; however, there are other sources of value that have not been taken into account yet.

Providing the cost of care beforehand will allow the patient enough time to understand what he or she may be getting into, similar to signing a contract, according to Austin Frakt, PhD, health economist and researcher.

Although GOP presidential hopefuls are all campaigning on promises to repeal and replace President Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA), the last real chance to repeal may have been the 2012 election, according to Avik Roy, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Most patients expect that the healthcare system can already learn from every clinical encounter, but the reality is that is not happening yet, said Sachin Jain, MD, MBA, chief medical officer at CareMore Health System.

There are 2 strategies for addressing primary medication nonadherence that have seen success, according to Lauren Harner, JD, senior manager for policy at PhRMA.

Although there will be changes in the marketplace if the Supreme Court decision makes residents in states using HealthCare.gov ineligible for subsidies, it won't be anything that is irreversible, according to Thomas P. Miller, JD, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

One point of concern among Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor during the oral arguments of King v. Burwell was the issue of unconstitutional coercion, and Timothy S. Jost, professor of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, explains the main issue.

Even though there hasn't been much public discussion from the Obama administration in regards to contingency plans should the Supreme Court rule in favor of the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell, there is likely much talk going on behind the scenes, explained Susan Dentzer, senior health policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Leading up to the Supreme Court's decision in the case of King v. Burwell, Avik Roy, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, discusses in what ways Congress should potentially act if the plaintiffs receive a favorable ruling, who is to blame more if subsidies are removed from the federal marketplace, and how much time there will be for a patch to prevent millions of Americans losing financial assistance and subsequently their health insurance.

Bundled payments are the most manageable of all the Triple Aim models that focus on quality, improving patient experience, and total cost of care, according to Lili Brillstein, director of Episodes of Care at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The US health industry is in the midst of a transformation to a value-outcome system, which is good for a learning health system, explained Lewis G. Sandy, MD, FACP, senior vice president of clinical advancement at UnitedHealth Group.

Most of the research in cancer economics has been on total cost and cost effectiveness, which is why Veena Shankaran MD, MS, assistant professor in the division of medical oncology at the University of Washington, wanted to have a panel discussion on financial toxicity at the ISPOR 20th Annual Meeting.

Aligning the care delivered with the patient's own desires is the biggest opportunity available to drive costs down while improving quality, according to Marc Boutin, JD, chief executive officer of the National Health Council.

With more than 35,000 people expected to attend the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, there are many highly anticipated aspects of the conference; however, Peter P. Yu, MD, FACP, FASCO, president of ASCO and director of Cancer Research at Palo Alto Medical Foundation, highlighted how the society has been going in a different direction with its keynote speaker.

The international representation and participation at the ISPOR 20th Annual Meeting was one of the key aspects of the meeting, held May 18-20 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, said Dan Malone, PhD, RPh, incoming president of ISPOR.

The new opioid quality measures by the Pharmacy Quality Alliance are a first step forward for improving use of prescription opioids.

The American Journal of Managed Care's Patient-Centered Oncology Care meeting is an important event for anyone interested in "crossing the chasm" that appears between providers and the rest of the healthcare world, explained Peter P. Yu, MD, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

The industry has seen a lot of progress when it comes to involving patients more and earlier in the research progress, Dan Leonard, president of the National Pharmaceutical Council, said at the Pharmaceutical Quality Alliance's 10th Annual Meeting.

"Change happens at the speed of measurement," Troy Trygstad, PharmD, MBA, PhD, vice president of pharmacy programs at Community Care of North Carolina, said at the Pharmacy Quality Alliance 10th Annual Meeting.

The Maryland Health Connection, the state's insurance exchange, employed a number of strategies in during the second open enrollment period to get consumers signed up, explained Carolyn Quattrocki, executive director of the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange, the agency that operates Maryland Health Connection.

There are 3 general issues that cancer survivors face, and each of them are very different challenges, according to Crystal S. Denlinger, MD, from the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

Costs have a huge impact on patients and financial toxicity, particularly in cancer care, is being given greater consideration now, according to Alex Bastian, MBA, senior vice president at GfK.

The medication adherence problem is emblematic of the larger coordinated care issue in the US healthcare system, according to Trishan Panch, MBBS, MPH, chief medical officer at Wellframe.

Given the diverse stakeholders in attendance, the hallway conversations at the ACO and Emerging Healthcare Delivery Coalition Spring 2015 meeting in San Diego, California, were just as interesting as the sessions, according to Anthony D. Slonim, MD, DrPH, president and chief executive officer for Renown Health, and co-chair of Coalition.

Although the Supreme Court oral arguments of King v. Burwell mostly went the way people were expecting, there were a few surprises, said Thomas P. Miller, JD, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who was able to sit in the courtroom the day of the arguments.

Having people from different parts of the diabetes care equation talking together at the 3rd Annual Patient-Centered Diabetes Care Meeting is what will move the industry forward, according to Robert A. Gabbay, MD, PhD, chief medical officer and senior vice president at Joslin Diabetes Center and the editor-in-chief of Evidence-Based Diabetes Management journal.