Latest Conference Articles

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.

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.

Early feeding, euvalemia, and multimodal pain management can be used to to accelerate surgical recovery and improve outcomes in gynecologic oncology, explained Sean C. Dowdy, MD, chair, division of gynecologic surgery, department of obstetrics and gynecology, Mayo Clinic.

Thomas LeBlanc, MD, of the Duke Cancer Institute, addresses the importance of adding a palliative care specialist to the cancer care team.

Since patients who receive CAR T-cell therapy experience unique adverse events, there will need to be education for providers who care for these patients, explained Stephen Schuster, MD, of the Perelman School of Medicine.

The high cost of new, innovative cancer treatments coming to market makes these therapies inaccessible to a lot of patients, said Michele McCourt, senior director of the CancerCare Co-Payment Assistance Foundation.

William Cliby, MD, consultant, division of gynecologic surgery, department of obstetrics & gynecology, Mayo Clinic, discusses patient factors that predispose them to adverse complications during surgery for ovarian cancer and using those predictors to improve care.

Thomas Graf, MD, chief medical officer and vice president, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, discusses evolving care bundle payments to better accommodate cancer patients.

If we don't close the gap in gender differences in HPV vaccination, we will likely see an increase in HPV-related cancers, explained Anna Beavis, MD, MPH, a gynecologic oncologist fellow at Johns Hopkins University.

How are large employers adapting to, and benefiting from, the value-based care practices that are a payer demand and a provider imperative? This was the focus of a panel moderated by Bo Gamble, director of Strategic Practice Initiatives, Community Oncology Alliance (COA), during the 2018 Community Oncology Conference hosted by COA, April 12-13 in National Harbor, Maryland.

In order to make Medicare drug price negotiation a reality, the government has to have additional leverage to negotiate that it doesn't have, explained Ed F. Haislmaier, the Preston A. Wells Jr senior research fellow at the Institute for Family Community, and Opportunity at The Heritage Foundation.

Providing financial navigators in cancer centers and hospitals can have demonstrable benefits for both patients and hospitals, explained Todd Yezefski, MD, senior fellow in the Clinical Research Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Division of Medical Oncology at the University of Washington.