Latest Conference Articles

Kathy Oubre, MS, CEO of Pontchartrain Cancer Center, discusses patient advocacy and legislative issues that will continue to define the future of community oncology.

The keynote session highlighted trends in COVID-19 and other respiratory illness rates, a bounce back in health care utilization, biosimilar market trends, new product launches, and more.

Davey B. Daniel, MD, chief medical officer at OneOncology, shares his insights on health equity practices, as well as the importance of developing clinical models within community oncology.

Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, executive vice president at Texas Oncology, discusses financial drivers affecting community oncology as well as new advances within cancer care that allow it to be treated as a chronic disease.

Representatives from Magellan Rx Management provided a detailed overview of current treatment options in ophthalmology and the impact that biosimilars could have during a session at AMCP 2023.

A panel at the Community Oncology Alliance (COA) 2023 Community Oncology Conference highlights the evolution of taking on risk, developing stratification models, and collaborating to learn from fellow providers.

Michael Burger, senior consultant at Point-of-Care Partners, explains that real-time benefit check lets physicians know how much a drug will cost the patient at the time they're writing the prescription, allowing them to give the patient a treatment they know they can afford.

In this AMCP Market Insights session, panelists discussed best practices and challenges when it comes to prescribing antibody drug conjugates, from the payer, provider, and patient perspectives, based on survey findings.

Among these treatments is an aflibercept product with improved dosing for the patient that is coming up for approval in a few months, explained Jeffrey Casberg, senior director of pharmacy at IPD Analytics.

Panelists at the Value-Based Insurance Design Summit discussed research and reforms to address the high cost of medications and the impact it has on equitable access to treatment.

The lower number needed to treat suggests that ruxolitinib cream may be more effective for patients with atopic dermatitis (AD), according to a poster presented at AMCP 2023.

Amy Valley, vice president for Clinical Strategy and Technology Solutions at Cardinal Health, discusses challenges presented within the oncology community, and how Cardinal Health is addressing these issues.

Ben Jones, vice president of Government Relations and Public Policy at the US Oncology Network, discussed the Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM), and why it's such an important topic at this year's conference.

Advantages to using surrogate vs clinical end points in drug approvals include earlier access, but there can be concerns about the efficacy and end result of the drug, said Yuqian Liu, PharmD, senior director of specialty clinical solutions at Magellan Rx Management.

Pharmacy benefit manager reform is a major trend in state managed care policy, said Adam Colborn, director of government relations at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP).

Implementing a strategy that focuses on dose rounding for chemotherapies can have a 3-fold impact of decreasing drug costs, minimizing drug waste, and improving treatment efficiency. This strategy and its benefits were explored in a session on day 2 of AMCP 2023.

A chief concern among those considering the upcoming alternative payment model in oncology, the Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM): Practices will have to take on downside risk immediately.

The Community Oncology Alliance (COA) retains the spirit of an upstart advocacy group, while working to look ahead at innovative technologies, care delivery trends, and other events that threaten independent practices, said oncology leaders while attending their annual meeting this week.

In this session at AMCP 2023, speakers broke down the challenges many managed care organizations face when wanting to collect detailed data on health disparities and proffered potential strategies that may help to facilitate gathering these data to address inequitable health care access.

Scott Soefje, PharmD, director of pharmacy cancer care at Mayo Clinic, explains the various ways drug dose rounding can reduce waste, reduce costs, and make drug administration more efficient.

Some challenges linking medication adherence to medical cost offsets include the potential of reverse causality, omitted variable bias, how adherence is measured between studies, and the outdated nature of some of the most-cited literature, said Ben Urick, PharmD, PhD, principal health outcomes researcher at Prime Therapeutics.

On the first full day of conference activity at AMCP 2023, a morning session examined prior authorization (PA) through a lens of refining the current process and the potential role of clinical trial data in PA criteria.

Panelists at the Value-Based Insurance Design Summit discussed ways their organizations are looking to create a better benefit design to promote health equity and address known disparities.

Kashyap Patel, MD, immediate past president of Community Oncology Alliance (COA) and CEO of Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates, talks about bringing together different stakeholders in the oncology space in order to benefit patients and providers.

While melanoma is one of the most aggressive cancers, making early detection crucial for outcomes, because it is visible on the surface, there are opportunities to catch it early, said Sancy Leachman, MD, PhD, professor and chair in the Department of Dermatology and director of the Melanoma Research Program at the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health and Science University.

Dermatology lends itself well to telemedicine, particularly as a screening tool to reduce wait times and increase access to care for patients with high-risk melanoma, said Erik Jaklitsch, second-year medical student at the University of Pittsburgh.

A panel assembled at the American Academy of Dermatology 2023 Annual Meeting encouraged the audience of dermatologists to advocate together for needed changes in payment, access, and practice.

Topics to be addressed at the annual conference, which will bring more than 1900 attendees to Kissimmee, Florida, include the Enhancing Oncology Model, efforts to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, and 340B reform.