Interviews

Ann LaCasce, MD, MMSc, director of the Dana-Farber/Mass General Brigham Fellowship in Hematology/Oncology and chair of the Lymphoma Research Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board, discusses potential shifts in the lymphoma space in the year ahead.

The newly appointed president and CEO of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions discussed timely issues where we may see progress in 2024.

Bevey Miner, executive vice president of health care strategy and policy, Consensus Cloud Solutions, discusses the complex landscape of proposed health care rules, and the potential impact of CMS' Advancing Interoperability and Prior Authorizations Rule.

Natasha Halasa, MD, MPH, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, discusses her role as principal investigator of the Vanderbilt site of the New Vaccine Surveillance Network.

Mike Brown, vice president of managed services at Cardinal Health, discusses Cardinal Health's goals to to leverage technology, while reducing costs to the health care system.

UnitedHealthcare is incorporating real-world evidence into pathways design and policy formulation, leveraging its members' data to evaluate the impact of different regimens on health resource utilization and costs, explains Lucy Langer, MD, MSHS, national medical director of oncology and genomics at UnitedHealthcare.

Sudipto Mukherjee, MD, PhD, MPH, hematology and medical oncology, Cleveland Clinic, suggests that some patients with indolent systemic mastocytosis (ISM) may be progressing at a faster rate than expected, and will need to be monitored and started on appropriate therapies.

UPMC Health Plan member Marjorie Robinson, of Monroeville, Pennsylvania, tells of her experiences with Pittsburgh-based Fabric Health as a single mom of 2 teenagers and why she believes that mental health–related concerns can be significant obstacles to overall good health.

UnitedHealthcare's oncology payment mode initially involved a pay-for-performance program based on pathways adherence, and will be transitioning in 2024 to a broader system with graded quartiles to incentivize greater participation and pathway adherence.

Mike Brown, vice president of managed services at Cardinal Health, discusses how remote pharmacy services are revolutionizing patient care by improving accessibility and medication safety.

Melinda Aldrich, PhD, MHE, associate professor in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in the division of genetic medicine, discussed her ongoing research aiming to identify the drivers of disparities in lung cancer outcomes in the US.

The Thyme Care virtual navigation program demonstrated a $594 reduction in total costs per member per month for navigated cancer patients compared with a control group, emphasizing the scalability of the independent virtual navigation model across various contracts, with opportunities to adapt to different populations and needs in the evolving landscape of value-based care arrangements.

David Adamson, MD, emphasizes the need for continuous education and building relationships with colleagues to navigate the complexities of reproductive rights and evolving care standards.

Registered dietitian, Molly Kimball, RD, CSSD, of Ochsner Health, navigates cultural identity in diet changes for long-term success, in an interview.

Molly Mendenhall, BSN, RN, director of quality and compliance at Oncology Hematology Care, Inc (OHC), discussed a 1-year quality improvement project implemented by OHC to standardize comprehensive biomarker testing in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Mike Brown, vice president of managed services at Cardinal Health, shares how drug cost control software has improved monitoring efficiency and reduced drug spending.

Aside from semaglutide, alternate weight loss routes include other anti-obesity medications, chronic weight management programs, or obesity medicine specialists, said Ian Neeland, MD.

Molly Kimball, RD, CSSD, of Ochsner Health, advocates for sustainable changes to populations' everyday behaviors to make healthy choices easier and more culturally relevant.

Sandra Stein, MD, of Banner Health Plans, details how she provides clinical and medical leadership in her role as chief medical officer.

Brian Mullen, PhD, head of innovation and product at The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic, discusses how providing second opinions has improved patient and provider experiences in health care.

Jeff McIntyre, MA, of the Global Liver Institute (GLI), discusses the importance of the health care community understanding non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and how to mitigate its global impact.

Ian Neeland, MD, of University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute, talks about the uptick in patients at his practice seeking semaglutide for weight loss.

Especially during shortages, Kirollos S. Hanna, PharmD, BCPS, BCOP, FACCC, director of pharmacy services at Minnesota Oncology, says practices should carve out areas where going to a different therapeutic approach isn't considered off-pathway.

According to Sandra Stein, MD, of Banner Health Plans, the event highlighted the significant influence of social determinants of health on health care costs and outcomes, emphasizing the shift in focus from traditional medical care to addressing crucial factors like housing, food, transportation, and utilities for positive health outcomes.

Bevey Miner, executive vice president of health care strategy and policy, Consensus Cloud Solutions, shares how extraction artificial intelligence is helping train machine learning models to recognize and extract information from documents, providing structured data with confidence scores.

Michael Gieske, MD, director of lung cancer screening at St. Elizabeth Health Care, speaks to the success of the Rural Appalachian Lung Cancer Screening Initiative, along with challenges to implementing increased lung cancer screening.

Sidney (Beau) Raymond, MD, MMM, FACP, chief medical officer of Ochsner Health Network, believes that the health care system should focus on preventing illness and disease, rather than just treating them after they occur.

Amrish Selvam is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Pittsburgh whose research and career interests lay in ophthalmology and who volunteers with the UPMC Vision Institute’s mobile eye clinic, the eyeVan.