Latest Conference Articles

Since the Orphan Drug Designation program was passed in 1983, there have been over 600 orphan drug approvals, compared to less than 10 the decade before, said Stephen Jung, PharmD, BCPS, manager, drug information, MedImpact Healthcare Systems, during a session at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy’s Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy Annual Meeting.

In a talk on integrative healthcare for transgender populations during the American Psychiatric Association’s 2018 Annual Meeting, held in New York, New York, Hansel Arroyo, MD, director of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at the Institute for Advanced Medicine at the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital, discussed the Institute’s approach to addressing mental health needs in the delivery of care.

During the American Psychiatric Association’s 2018 Annual Meeting, held in New York, New York, Patricia Newton, MD, MA, MPH, delivered the 2018 Solomon Carter Fuller Lecture, in which she discussed the challenges that face patients and psychiatrists of African descent.

During a workshop, panelists discussed outreach efforts, including Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes, known as Project ECHO, to deliver psychiatric care to underserved patients in the United States and Canada.

Calvin Knowlton, BScPharm, MDiv, PhD, chief executive officer and founder of Tabula Rasa HealthCare, discusses who benefits most from the Enhanced Medication Therapy Management Model, how advances in technology have enhanced these services, and what best practices have been identified.

As The Commonwealth Fund celebrates 100 years, David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, looks back at the work it has done.

Posters presented at the American Psychiatric Association 2018 Annual Meeting highlight methods of treating patients with substance use disorder.

Mental health disorders are both a cause and a consequence of social determinants of health, and providing integrated care that addresses issues outside of the health system will require work at multiple levels, including clinical, policy, and finance, explained Benjamin G. Druss, MD, of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.

Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, a senior clinical consultant in Emerging Therapeutics for Express Scripts, discusses specialty drugs that have recently been approved, and which we will likely see approved in the remainder of the year.

Funding is the biggest challenge scientists and clinical investigators face when trying to find successful therapies to treat advanced bladder cancer, explained Donna Hansel, MD, PhD, of University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine.

Addressing health disparities and social determinants of health can be daunting, but there has been a lot of progress, said Shantanu Agrawal, MD, MPhil, CEO and president of National Quality Forum.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-enabled devices are already making their way into the market and should be able to help make meaning of data in order to improve care delivery, said speakers at the 15th Annual World Health Care Congress.

Practices increasingly need to use technology to deliver care in an increasingly value-based world, said Charles Saunders, MD, CEO of Integra Connect.

Vivor helps patients receive financial assistance by focusing on empowering the providers and making it easier for financial navigators to do their job, said Ian Manners, founder and CEO of Vivor.

Charitable organizations are seeing more and more patients who need financial assistance, said Dan Klein, President and CEO, Patient Access Network (PAN) Foundation.

Tom Price, MD, former HHS secretary, identifies key principles to keep in mind as the political parties move forward with any health policy changes.

Social determinants of health are being carefully tended to in the Medicare populations, explained Lee Newcomer, MD, MHA, private consultant.

Communication is critical in providing integrated, comprehensive care, said Mark Soberman, MD, MBA, FACS, former president of the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC).

At the 15th Annual World Health Care Congress, CMS Administrator Seema Verma highlighted new policies and initiatives from CMS to ensure that programs are delivering high-quality care in a sustainable way as healthcare spending continues to grow at a faster rate than the overall US economy.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell treatments are still new enough that there are still unknown regarding long-term side effects, which is something patients need to understand before they undergo treatment, said Shannon L. Maude, MD, PhD, of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

A shift in care delivery and the availability of data are helping to make value-based care a reality in the United States, but the change has been taking too long, said panelists at the 15th Annual World Health Care Congress.

We’ve done a lot of work on quality improvement, such as enhancing recovery, reducing intestinal injury during and after surgery, and reducing infections after surgery, explained William Cliby, MD, consultant, division of gynecologic surgery, department of obstetrics & gynecology, Mayo Clinic.

If more time was spent on things that make life more high quality, less time would be spent on worrying about healthcare, said 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.

More attention needs to be brought to palliative care practices in ovarian cancer after a woman relapses, said John Schorge, MD, associate editor of The Green Journal, and Gynecologic Oncologist at Tufts Medical Center.

Enhanced recovery pathways are important because they allow the human body to be as normal physiologically as it can be while undergoing the stress of surgery, explained Jamie Bakkum-Gamez, MD, associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and gynecologic oncologist at Mayo Clinic.

Clinicians in the audience attending the annual meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said patients and payers may only see the headlines about the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) ratings and don't pay attention to finer points about recommendations for subgroups.

Curtis Lowery, MD, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and director of the Center for Distance Health, discusses how technology will impact the future of healthcare.

Former Ambassador Nancy Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen, talks about the stigma that used to surround breast cancer and how she brought awareness to the disease.