Health Care Delivery

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.

Dupilumab is the first biologic to significantly improve lung function in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to topline results released Thursday.

Manmeet Ahluwalia, MD, MBA, chief, Solid Tumor Medical Oncology; deputy director; and chief scientific officer at Miami Cancer Institute, spoke on the short- and long-term goals for Miami Cancer Institute’s Center for Equity in Cancer Care & Research in improving minority patient enrollment in clinical trials.

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.

Minnesota looks to create abortion refuge for patients and providers; Moderna’s expected price single dose of COVID-19 sits at $130; FDA staff sees a "clinical benefit" in Biogen’s ALS drug.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we feature several leaders in diversity, equity, and inclusion advancing health equity in their respective organization’s policy and practice initiatives.

Specific dosing regimens of treatments prescribed by blood specialists have not been widely studied, despite the advent of newer hemophilia therapies, the researchers said.

Jessica Allegretti, MD, MPH, medical director of the Crohn's and Colitis Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, discusses the standard of care for the prevention and treatment of primary and recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI).

Baseline risk assessment that includes prior treatment history for cancer, prior cardiovascular events, and markers for potential heart damage are all important, emphasizes Tochi M. Okwuosa, DO, cardiologist and director of cardio-oncology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Subanalyses of data from the LIBERTY PN-PRIME and LIBERTY PN-PRIME2 studies illustrate how dupilumab for prurigo nodularis can better patient outcomes, including quality of life and symptom burden.

Candida auris was first reported in the United States in 2016; the highly contagious fungal infection has been labeled an “urgent threat” by the CDC, and its spread may have aided by underresourced public health systems.

Gov. Mark Gordon sings a ban on the use of abortion pills in Wyoming; a new study shows that Affordable Care Act has reduced racial disparities in health care; California Gov. Gavin Newsom announces a contract to make affordable insulin.

Osimertinib (Tagrisso; AstraZeneca) now has shown a statistically significant and clinically meaningful overall survival benefit in both the early adjuvant and late-stage metastatic settings.

Age-specific risk factors for asthma-like symptoms were identified in the first, second, and third years of life, a new study finds.

Samyukta Mullangi, MD, MBA, oncology fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and incoming medical director at Thyme Care, explained Thyme Care’s value-based care (VBC) system in oncology and the benefits of care navigation.

The high court in North Dakota voted to protect abortion in that state; an outside panel of FDA expert advisors voted to support a full approval for Paxlovid; Sanofi follows competitors' price caps for insulin.

Medicare prospective payment for dialysis modestly increased availability and use of home-based dialysis treatment but did not affect historic racial disparities in home dialysis.

Spending on novel therapies in high-risk bladder cancer had minimal impact on Oncology Care Model payments to practices, according to this cohort study and an average performance estimation.

Lawyers were questioned in a federal lawsuit intending to overturn approval of a drug used for medication abortion; during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, US maternal mortality increased for the third year in a row; the Alzheimer’s Association is lobbying Congress to push for Medicare coverage of new Alzheimer drugs under early access.

The Skin Pain Numeric Rating Scale, Worst-Itch Numeric Rating Scale, and Dermatology Life Quality Index were evaluated for their content validity, fit-for-purpose, and psychometric and measurement properties among patients with the chronic skin disease being treated with dupilumab.

Risk of flare in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) was low after fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) for the treatment of recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI).

A recent study identified disparities in cachexia incidence among patients with stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) across different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.

A health system transformational leadership framework and management system made visible and eliminated defects in value and was associated with reduced annual Medicare expenditures and increased quality between 2017 and 2020.

Findings of a meta-analysis showed that women with epilepsy were at increased odds of miscarriage, stillbirth, and maternal death, and risk of poor perinatal outcomes increased with greater use of antiseizure medication.

There may be discrepancies in the types of information patients want and the information they receive when multiple myeloma treatment decisions are made, a recent study found.