While some patients and physicians are not aware of the costs of care, others are concerned about whether they can afford treatment options at all. Dr Miller describes some of the major steps to the incremental benefits and incremental costs incurred by new agents.
While some patients and physicians are not aware of the costs of care, others are concerned about whether they can afford treatment options at all. Dr Miller describes some of the major steps to the incremental benefits and incremental costs incurred by new agents.
“We’re recommending that actually, when these patients are screened and are positive, that they actually get appropriately staged by a hepatologist. This has become much more complex, and even though the agents are orally available now—which means many more primary care doctors may want to attempt to treat these patients—I think proper identification of which patients should be treated, and making sure that they’re really being worked up appropriately and tracked appropriately, is going to be crucial,” he says. “This is becoming a much more complex disease to treat. The great news is that it’s also becoming much more treatable. We’re recommending to our clients that they encourage evaluation by a hepatologist.”
Dr Wilson suggests that new agents add tremendous value, especially when compared to other treatments historically. The cost equation, however, can be overwhelming.
The panelists go on to discuss how sofosbuvir and simeprevir showed improvement in hard-to-treat patients, or those who failed to showed improvement with interferon-based treatment. Outcomes of these new treatments can be tremendous, but how these patients can receive treatment may be the real challenge.
The Biden administration recently launched the Global Health Security Strategy, a new effort to combat the spread of infectious diseases; lawmakers zeroed in on the risks of massive consolidation in health care during the first congressional hearing on the Change Healthcare hack; the FDA recently announced the recall of a pair of heart devices linked to numerous deaths and injuries.
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Navigating Health Policy in an Election Year: Insights From Dr Dennis Scanlon
April 2nd 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with Dennis Scanlon, PhD, the editor in chief of The American Journal of Accountable Care®, about prior authorization, price transparency, the impact of health policy on the upcoming election, and more.
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