Latest Conference Articles

Organizations are trying to think about how they can involve team-based care by incorporating individuals who have a certain skill set that can relieve the practicing clinician, physician, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant from some of the burden, explained Dennis P. Scanlon, PhD, professor, Health Policy and Administration, and director, Center for Health Care and Policy Research, Pennsylvania State University.

The free flow of data needs to be an intrinsic part of the way we think about healthcare in this country, said Harlan Krumholz, MD, SM, the Harold H. Hines Jr professor, Medicine and Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale School of Medicine, and director, Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Yale-New Haven Hospital.

With little evidence, it is still difficult to know how to screen patients for social determinants of health issues, explained Rachel Gold, PhD, MPH, investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Northwest Center for Health Research and lead research scientist at OCHIN.

Individuals, families, and local, state, and federal government all have incurred costs as a result of the opioid epidemic, explained Dennis P. Scanlon, PhD, professor, Health Policy and Administration, and director, Center for Health Care and Policy Research, Pennsylvania State University.

We know that there are a lot of problems with precision medicine and lots of areas that we need to define better, but that shouldn’t stop us from moving forward and trying to optimize the care for our patients, said Michael Thompson, MD, PhD, FASCO, Aurora Advanced Healthcare.

Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, instructor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, attending physician of medical oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, outlines the role of adjuvant therapy in treating patients with HER2-positive breast cancer, as well as the absence of biomarkers in this patient population.

If we’re truly serious about being outcomes oriented in healthcare, we can’t come near accomplishing what we’d like to accomplish without direct intervention with regard to social determinants, explained Clifford Goodman, PhD, senior vice president and director, Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research, The Lewin Group.

We need to bring together our real-world data and our reimbursement systems to recognize the fact that a lot of what could be gained by precision medicine is going to be based on a lot of research, explained Peter Paul Yu, MD, FASCO, FACP, physician-in-chief, Hartford HealthCare Cancer Center.

I think the biggest surprise in the move toward value-based care is that there’s a lot of organizations sitting on the fence in limbo because the payment mechanism is still built off a fee-for-service chassis, said Dennis P. Scanlon, PhD, professor, Health Policy and Administration, and director, Center for Health Care and Policy Research, Pennsylvania State University.

The most common question patients ask when they start a new treatment after a new diagnosis is "what will this do to me?" explained Sally Okun, RN, MMHS, vice president, Policy and Ethics, PatientsLikeMe.

Different value-based payment approaches are evolving for different sorts of conditions, different sorts of financial circumstances, and other factors, explained Clifford Goodman, PhD, senior vice president and director, Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research, The Lewin Group.

There are small subgroups within each tumor type and within each molecular type, and someday, we might be able to actually pair the 2 to give patients a little bit more personalization and precision to their treatments, said Victoria Villaflor, MD, associate professor of Medicine, hematology and oncology.

Peter Paul Yu, MD, FASCO, FACP, physician-in-chief, Hartford HealthCare Cancer Center, discusses the shift toward interoperability among electronic health record systems and efforts needed to accelerate this shift.

Michael Thompson, MD, PhD, FASCO, Aurora Advanced Healthcare, discusses challenges associated with conducting precision medicine trials in the community setting.

Rear Admiral Wanda Barfield, MD, MPH, director of the Division of Reproductive Health for the CDC, discusses the initiatives that have played a role in the decrease of teen pregnancy in the United States.

The purpose of Project Baseline is to map human health so we can convert from a reactive healthcare system to a proactive healthcare system, explained Adrian F. Hernandez, MD, MHS, vice dean, clinical research, Duke University School of Medicine

It’s been years since a large portion of colon cancer patients have seen any innovations in treatment. However, there are dietary and physical behavioral changes individuals can make that positively impact colon cancer survival said Leonard Saltz, MD, executive director of Clinical Value and Sustainability, head of Colorectal Oncology Section, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

John Schorge, MD, associate editor of The Green Journal, and Gynecologic Oncologist at Tufts Medical Center, discusses different prevention methods in ovarian cancer.

We need to collaborate and test these innovations in controlled circumstances so that we can evaluate their effect and understand what needs to be iterated to continue to improve them, explained Harlan Krumholz, MD, SM, the Harold H. Hines Jr professor, Medicine and Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale School of Medicine, and director, Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Yale-New Haven Hospital.

There are a lot of new and exciting agents that are being explored for metastatic HER2-positive disease, explained Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, instructor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, attending physician of medical oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Jamie Bakkum-Gamez, MD, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and Gynecologic oncologist at Mayo Clinic, discusses her research on developing an early detection test for endometrial cancer.

Not all health data is collected in a similar manner, so analyzing such data can be challenging for researchers, explained Ejim E. Mark, MD, MPH, MBA, CEO and founder of Access Healthcare Foundation.

The unique composition and massive size of California’s population means that health plans and systems in the state have had to explore new ways to improve the delivery of healthcare for those with complex health and social needs, according to panelists at the AHIP Institute & Expo 2018.

Immune therapies, or check point inhibitors, have been very successful in a subset of patient with multiple different types of malignancies and has changed their trajectory tremendously, explained Victoria Villaflor, MD, associate professor of Medicine, hematology and oncology, Northwestern University.

Sally Okun, RN, MMHS, vice president, Policy and Ethics, PatientsLikeMe, discusses findings from PatientsLikeMe's research on what patients define as good care.

Rear Admiral Wanda Barfield, MD, MPH, director of the Division of Reproductive Health for the CDC, discusses how the CDC is working to counteract perinatal morbidity and mortality in the United States.

People are getting better at handling data in their electronic health records (EHRs), but there is a lot and there should be a way to categorize how the data should be used, said Pamela Tobias, MS, RHIA, CHDA, administrator of oncology services at Lehigh Valley Health Network.

Haywood Brown, MD, immediate past president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology, discusses the Alliance for Innovation in Maternal health (AIM) program which is designed to decrease the top-leading causes of maternal morbidity and mortality.