Latest Conference Articles

There is a greater overall survival benefit for patients with recurrent urothelial cancer being treated with pembrolizumab versus chemotherapy, according to long-term results of the KEYNOTE-045 trial.

The destination is to get to a point where we can spend our healthcare resources more wisely so that patients get the care they need and we all get the type of innovation that we really want, said Robert Dubois, MD, PhD, chief science officer and executive vice president, National Pharmaceutical Council.

The prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) identified in an outpatient sample of 492 adults seeking mental health treatment was nearly 10 times higher than the prevalence identified in epidemiological studies, according to a poster presented at the recent 2018 Annual Meeting of The American Professional Society of ADHD and Related Disorders.

Via Oncology is taking several steps to implement value into clinical pathways programs, explained President and CEO Kathleen Lokay.

We want to know all sides of the 2-risk model, like with any challenge or strategy, said Roger Brito, DO, national director for oncology, Aetna.

In prostate cancer, we're using combinations by looking to see how 1 drug may trigger an immune infiltrate or proteins that allow the tumor to resist the monotherapy, said Sumit Subudhi, MD, PhD, genitourinary medical oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Jason Harris, associate director of policy and programs at National Health Council, notes the importance of using real-world evidence to support value in payment models.

The addition of docetaxel to first-line long-term hormone therapy in patients with prostate cancer is associated with improved quality of life (QoL) benefits and cost effectiveness, according to study results presented at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

There was a reduced rate of uninsured patients at the time of diagnosis and a shift to earlier stage at time of diagnosis for patients with testicular cancer in states that adopted Medicaid expansion in 2014, according to findings presented at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

Robotic procedures have really exploded in prostate cancer, said Christopher Kane, MD, professor of urology, University of California, San Diego. Robotic radical prostatectomy is now the most common way a radical prostatectomy is done in the United States.

During a session at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, Peter Black, MD, professor, department of urologic sciences, University of British Columbia, discussed using molecular subtypes, the Coxen model, and gene mutations to select patients and therapies for neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

During a session at the 2018 Genitourinay Cancers Symposium, Abhishek Solanki, MD, MS, assistant professor, radiation oncology, Loyola University of Chicago discussed the role of immunotherapy in patients undergoing radiation therapy for bladder cancer.

With new guidelines on how to treat and manage muscle-invasive bladder cancer, Jeffrey Holzbeierlein, MD, FACS, professor of urology, director of urologic oncology, interim chair of the department of urology, University of Kansas Health System, provided insight into how the guidelines have changed the management of the disease at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

Brenton Fargnoli, MD, medical director of value-based care and director of product marketing and strategy at Flatiron Health, recognizes the importance of benchmarking to further improvement.

During a session at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, 2 doctors debate whether there is existing evidence for local treatment for patients newly diagnosed with metastatic disease.

For the first time, molecular therapies, such as radium-223, provide a survival-prolonging agent for men with advanced prostate cancer affecting the bone, explained Joe O'Sullivan, MD, FRCR, clinical professor, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, Queen's University Belfast.

Osteomimicry may contribute to the uptake of radium-223 within bone metastases and may subsequently enhance the therapeutic benefit of radium-223, according to an abstract presented by Andrew Armstrong, MD, associate professor of medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

Apalutamide significantly improved median metastasis-free survival by 2 years in men with nonmetastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer (nmCRPC), according to study results presented by Eric Jay Small, MD, MD, FASCO, chief of the division of hematology and oncology in the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), deputy director of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, and professor in residence in the Department of Medicine and Department of Urology, at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

Only 20% of patients who have a heart attack undergo recommended cardiac rehabilitation, so cardiologists are looking at ways to encourage patients to go to rehab, explained Justin Bachmann, MD, MPH, FACC, instructor of Medicine and Health Policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams, MD, MPH, made a surprise visit to AcademyHealth’s National Health Policy Conference Tuesday morning and took to the podium to declare that he wants to be the first surgeon general to issue a report showing the links between health and a healthy economy.

As the federal government faces another potential shutdown at the end of the week, a panel of former Congressional staffers shared their perspectives at AcademyHealth’s National Health Policy Conference about lessons learned on Capitol Hill.

We have been living in a groundhog world for the past several decades when it comes to healthcare spending, said Robert Dubois of the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC) during AcademyHealth’s National Health Policy Conference, in Washington, DC. The session called When Are We Going to Get Serious About Health Care Spending in the United States? came a few days after the NPC launched an effort to have a dialogue around this issue by issuing a call for research around the topic and partnering with Health Affairs on a campaign called Going Below the Surface.

Before undertaking something like implementing the Oncology Care Model, practices should understand the scope of the project and the overall importance it can have for patient care, said Terrill Jordan, CEO of Regional Cancer Care Associates.

Are Medicaid waivers meant to encourage able-bodied adults to work, or a return to poor laws of old? Or are they a means to get states that have not expanded Medicaid to expand? A diversity of viewpoints on these and other topics were on full display during Health Reform X.O: What Now, What Next?, the first session of AcademyHealth’s National Health Policy Conference.

When you have constant evolving contract, there are changes, and so some of the feedback I’m getting is that sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the changes, said Peter Aran, MD, medical director of Population Health Management at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma.

Providers should be involved in new reimbursement model development from day 1, said Roger Brito, DO, national director for oncology, Aetna.

When a drug becomes first-line, I would like to think that as a clinician I would have access to that, but most importantly that my patients would not have to have a bake sale or take out a second mortgage on their homes to get therapies that are designed specifically for them, said A. Mark Fendrick, MD, director of the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design at the University of Michigan.

Kathleen Lokay, president and CEO of Via Oncology, encourages physicians to educate patients on clinical pathways and discusses how the patient voice is heard.