Clinical

Coverage of sessions held at Cancerscape, the Association of Community Cancer Center’s 42nd annual meeting on policy, value, and quality, held March 2-4, 2016, in Washington, DC.

AMCP Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy Annual Meeting 2016 kicked off by delving into the near-term specialty pharmaceutical pipeline with Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, senior clinical consultant of emerging therapies at Express Scripts.

An international study evaluating nivolumab in head and neck cancer has found that patients treated with the checkpoint inhibitor were twice as likely to be alive at 1 year after initiating treatment, compared with patients who were given standard chemotherapy.

The FDA recently approved the biosimilar infliximab and found that from an immunogenicity profile it was more or less similar, which is important for payers and providers, explained Jeremy Schafer, PharmD, MBA, vice president and director of specialty solutions at Precision For Value.

A study presented at the ongoing annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research has confirmed that 3 commercially available diagnostic tests that measure the expression of the programmed death ligand 1 protein in non-small cell lung cancer could be interchanged.

While clinical pathways can help standardize care, considering the multitude of options available for oncology care providers, there is significant push-back from providers as well.

A cost-economic analysis by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health has found that switching to Gardasil-9, which protects against 9 oncogenic serotypes of the human papillomavirus, would provide improved health benefits at the same or lower societal cost.

Evidence-Based Oncology invited a panel of experts who are experienced in the creation of oncology care pathways, use them in their practice, and have researched the development and implementation of care pathways, to exchange ideas on the topic.

When asked “what is your surgical site infection rate?” one will get an answer that is almost certainly removed from reality.

What we're reading, April 18, 2016: medical experts ask the Joint Commission to revisit its standards of pain management; study determines low-cost generics just as effective at treating hepatitis C as brand name drugs; and UnitedHealth also pulling out of Michigan Obamacare exchange.

Targeting cancer stem cells could have a much better impact on the outcome of patients with multiple myeloma being treated with standard chemotherapy, a new single-arm study by researchers at Johns Hopkins has found.

Data on drug prescriptions, diagnoses, and events are increasingly being used for epidemiologic and pharmacologic studies and for the evaluation of quality of care, but questions arise about how complete and accurate the diagnoses and events in these databases are.

Despite the fundamental advances in cancer care technology and care delivery that have made these improvements possible, our delivery system remains quite inefficient and frequently falls short of being truly patient-centered. Is a system-based solution the answer?

Study finds a first heart attack is more likely to lead to heart failure in patients when the burden of coronary artery disease increases.

Many physicians are interested in using genomic profiling in patient care, but many believe they are unprepared to do so.

Pharmaceutical industry experts provide an overview of the highly complex biosimilar development process at The Community Oncology Conference: Innovation in Cancer Care, held in Orlando, Florida.

An overview of the oncology clinical pathways development program at the UPMC CancerCenter and how it led to the creation of Via Oncology, a clinical pathways vendor.

What we're reading, April 15, 2016: troubling disparities in access to preventive care remain; new test to choose the right hepatitis C medication could save money; and upcoming loss of exclusivity for some drugs could mean big savings for the healthcare system.

Representatives from 3 clinics that successfully participated in the Commission on Cancer accreditation process for the Oncology Medical Home model participated in a panel discussion on the first day of The Community Oncology Conference: Innovation in Cancer Care.

On the first day of The Community Oncology Conference: Innovation in Cancer Care, held in Orlando, Florida, April 13-15, 2016, oncologists discussed how their practices are coping with the transition toward quality- and value-based reimbursement.

American workers’ compensation payers experienced a 2.2% increase in pharmacy spending in 2015, but effective management programs helped lower injured workers’ drug utilization by 2.6%.

Adverse drug reaction profiles for 12 marketed antidepressant and anticonvulsant medications are inconsistently reported in Europe versus the United States.

The committee voted 12-1 in favor of delaying approval of the drug and waiting on results from the phase 3 study.

A new study published in The Journal of Urology has found that active surveillance in prostate cancer patients who might have a low-grade disease has the possibility of disease progression in only a small number of patients.

What we're reading, April 13, 2016: scientists find possible "superhero DNA" protecting individuals from debilitating diseases; NPR shines a light on the long wait Native Americans face for healthcare; and doctors rarely discuss weight loss strategies with obese patients.

Cancer pathways can potentially improve patient outcomes and reduce costs. Recent concerns about pathway adoption deserve attention, including excessive administrative burden to clinics.

We offer recommendations for the development and design of clinical pathways in an effort to establish a set of normative criteria that creates trust and transparency.

An updated recommendation by the US Preventive Services Task Force advises the use of low-dose aspirin in adults 50 to 69 years of age, who have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) or colorectal cancer (CRC), are not at an increased risk of bleeding, and have a life expectancy of at least 10 years, for the prevention of CVD and CRC.

What we're reading, April 12, 2016: Zika virus scarier than initially thought; KaloBios will adopt a more transparent and "responsible" pricing model for products; and children in rural areas have more complex and expensive hospital stays.