Latest Conference Articles

At the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy’s Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy Annual Meeting, experts addressed the cost of treating patients with hemophilia and the importance of care coordination to ensure a more holistic approach toward caring for these patients.

Physician involvement, patient input, and accuracy are the most important aspects of successfully implementing guidelines, said Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD, FACP, FRACP, president, Carolinas HealthCare System's Levine Cancer Institute.

Problems in healthcare seem overwhelming, with at least 17 different factors cited as driving unsustainable spending, according to a presentation at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy’s Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy Annual Meeting held April 23-26, in Boston, Massachusetts. Two executives from Precision for Value LLC spoke about “Charting the Shifting Value-Based Healthcare Landscape: Emerging Developments for 2018 and Beyond” and offered their view on what healthcare companies can do to succeed.

Tina Joseph, PharmD, BCACP, assistant professor, college of pharmacy, Nova Southeastern University, discusses collaborative practice agreements between pharmacists and physicians, as well as the challenges with, and best practices for, successful implementation.

We may not be ready for patient-reported outcomes (PROs) to be the sole decision-maker yet, but the trend is toward PROs being included more and more in value-based processes, explained Somali Burgess, PhD, senior director, Xcenda.

The main causes of burnout stem from the system of the practice, not individual behaviors, said Barbara Balik, EdD, MS, RN, co-founder of Aefina Partners and senior faculty at the Institute of Healthcare Improvement.

During a Science and Innovation Product Theater, sponsored by Amgen, Seth J. Baum, MD, FAAC, FACPM, FAHA, FNLA, FASPC, president of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology, explained the significance of evolocumab's expanded indication, which makes it no longer mandatory for patients to try statins first.

There are 6 key issues that market access teams are facing amid evolving marketplace trends in the pharmaceutical industry, said Douglas Long, BS, MBA, vice president, industry relations, IQVIA, when speaking at the headline session of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy’s Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy Annual Meeting held April 23-26, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Migraine is a chronic illness, but many people, including both patients and healthcare providers­, don’t think of it that way, said Richard G. Wenzel, PharmD, CPPS, speaking at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy’s Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy Annual Meeting held April 23-26, in Boston, Massachusetts.

There is a lot of competition in specialty pharmacy right now, said Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, a senior clinical consultant in Emerging Therapeutics for Express Scripts.

Brandon Newman, PharmD, MMHC, CSP, program director, specialty pharmacy, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, explains the benefits of collaboration between payers and academic centers and how this collaboration, in turn, benefits patients.

While use of services at federally qualified health centers has increased particularly since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the increasing trend started back in 2002, said M. Kristina Wharton, MPH, of the Department of Global Health Management and Policy at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

When Robert Navarro, PharmD, started his career decades ago at a managed care company, healthcare as a percentage of the gross domestic product was 8%. Now, the clinical pharmacy professor noted, the figure is at nearly 18% and rising, and the industry keeps having a conversation about value­. Speaking at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy’s Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy Annual Meeting, held April 23-26, in Boston, Massachusetts, he and Ashok Vegesna, PharmD, MS, of Novartis, spoke about Visions of a Value-Based Health Care System.

Through Medication Therapy Management, a pharmacist will be able to recognize indications of potential opioid abuse, explained Brian Litten, JD, chief strategic officer, Tabula Rasa HealthCare.

Value-based care can only occur if it is transformative throughout an entire healthcare system or a component of the healthcare system, said Robert Navarro, PharmD, clinical professor, College of Pharmacy, University of Florida.

At the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy's Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy Annual Meeting, held April 23-26, in Boston, Massachusetts, an overflow capacity crowd gathered for one of the meeting’s yearly highlights­: Specialty Pharmaceuticals in Development. Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, a senior clinical consultant in Emerging Therapeutics for Express Scripts, talked about the key trends in the specialty drug market, including cancer drugs, new competition, and orphan drugs.

David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, president of The Commonwealth Fund, discusses the role of mergers and acquisitions in delivering affordable, high-quality care.

Recent changes in the healthcare industry can both contribute to and exacerbate clinician burnout, but can also improve the situation, said Kathleen Blake, MD, MPH, vice president for Performance Improvement at the American Medical Association.

Bringing together community stakeholders and healthcare leaders can diminish health inequities, said Shantanu Agrawal, MD, MPhil, CEO and president of National Quality Forum.

Ray Page, DO, PhD, president and director of research at The Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders and chair-elect of the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) Clinical Practice Committee discusses the first results of the Oncology Care Model (OCM) and ASCO’s top legislative priorities.

If most practices excel at the same clinical practice measures, then small differences in performances could lead to significant financial differences, a speaker warned.

Dan Klein, president and CEO of the Patient Access Network (PAN) Foundation, discusses the need for more patient assistance foundations to help patients pay for treatment.

With chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy being so new, there is going to be a learning curve as providers become more educated about the treatments, the manufacturing process, and the toxicities, Houston Holmes, MD, MBA, FACP, a medical oncologist with Texas Oncology, explained at the Community Oncology Alliance’s (COA) 2018 Community Oncology Conference.

Sara Rosenbaum, JD, the Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy and founding chair of the Department of Health Policy at the Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University, discusses the potential impact the Trump administration will have on Medicaid programs.

Martha Gaines, MD, JD, LLM, founder and director of The Center for Patient Partnerships, clinical professor of law, University of Wisconsin Law School, explains how she turned her experience as a cancer survivor into a model for consumer-centered patient advocacy.

Leigh Purvis, director of Health Services Research at AARP Public Policy Institute, addresses the burdens of high prescription drug costs on Medicare beneficiaries.

Having numerous therapies to treat prostate cancer can actually be a bad thing—it makes it difficult to design clinical trials for new therapies coming into the space, explained Joe O'Sullivan, MD, FRCR, clinical professor, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, Queen's University Belfast.

"If clinicians are burning out, it is unlikely that participation in new payment models will be sustainable," explained Mark Friedberg, MD, MPP, senior natural scientist and director of the Boston office at RAND Corporation.