Oncology

This week, the top stories in managed care included HHS releasing the final rule for the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, a commentary on the downside of drug coupons, and the World Health Organization called on countries to enact a soda tax.

Radiomic combines imaging and computational technologies and can identify patients with recurrent glioblastoma who may benefit from using angiogenesis inhibitors.

A survey by Avalere Health found that only 19% of drug makers publicly post policies about their compassionate use programs.

What we're reading, October 12, 2016: a US senator calls for a limit to prescription fentanyl; healthcare costs aren't skyrocketing, despite claims; IBM's Watson will identify cancer treatment and clinical trials for IBM employees.

A retrospective study in breast cancer patients suggests that patients can lower their out-of-pocket costs by speaking with their oncologist about alternate treatments that may be equally effective and understanding the drug coverage policy of their insurance plan.

Innovation in oncology treatments has reduced the mortality rate for cancer, but it comes at a price. At the 5th Annual Patient-Centered Oncology Care, experts will discuss cost-sharing models, as well as updates in cancer care treatment, such as precision medicine and immuno-oncology.

Researchers at the University of Chicago have developed a clinically relevant patient-centered tool that can measure a patient’s risk for financial stress.

Granulocyte-colony stimulating factors (G-CSFs) reduce the risk of febrile neutropenia in patients with cancer. This study evaluates the clinical and nonclinical value associated with G-CSFs.

While nivolumab failed to surpass the outcomes of chemotherapy as first-line treatment in programmed death ligand-1—expressing patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), pembrolizumab bettered chemotherapy in improving survival in a similar cohort.

A retrospective analysis has found that longer term adjuvant treatment with tamoxifen significantly decreases the risk of contralateral breast cancer.

This week, the top managed care stories included conference coverage from the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy's 2016 Nexus, Bill Clinton courted controversy when discussing the Affordable Care Act, and research finds fear of a job loss can increase the risk of diabetes.

HHS has been banned from using a patient identifier but several organizations, including national payers, providers, and prescription drug networks, want this reversed.

A study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found an increased rate of resection and a reduction in the probability of emergent resection for colorectal cancer (CRC) as a result of insurance expansion in Massachusetts.

According to the 2016 Community Oncology Practice Impact Report, about 15 community practices in the United States have either closed or were acquired, each month since 2008.

A draft guidance issued by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) rejected use of Merck's programmed death-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

At the Institute for Clinical Immuno-Oncology National Conference, a panel of care providers presented institutional experiences with immunotherapy, and how a collaborative care approach helped the process.

Precision Promise, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN)'s precision medicine trial, seeks to transform outcomes for pancreatic cancer patients with the goal set to double survival by 2020.

Perennial favorite, Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, senior clinical consultant of emerging therapeutics at Express Scripts, opened the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy 2016 Nexus, October 3, 2016, in National Harbor, Maryland, with a discussion of specialty pharmaceutical drugs in the pipeline.

The funds that the Patient Access Network (PAN) Foundation provides to patients are often used to help with the cost of medications, and there has been a large increase in the number of patients looking for assistance for the cost of cancer treatments, explained Daniel J. Klein, president and CEO of the PAN Foundation.

A study suggests that regions of England where patients show less awareness of cancer symptoms tend to have lower cancer survival rates, particularly in lower-income areas. The research, published in the British Journal of Cancer also examined whether barriers to care can affect the likelihood of surviving different cancers.

The cancer community has seen tremendous progress in the field of immunotherapy. However, educating patients and care providers across healthcare on this new tool remains a significant challenge.

This week, the top stories in managed care included 2 reports on the fight against addiction, researchers have learned more about the effects of healthy living on avoiding cancers, and a study finds fitness trackers do not help people lose more weight.

Timothy M. Johnson, MD, spoke enthusiastically about the possibilities of sentinel lymph node biopsy in his lecture at the 25th European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology Congress in Vienna, Austria. His presentation, called “Melanoma Sentinel Node Biopsy: Past, Present and Future in the New Era of Systemic Therapies,” covered guidelines for the procedure as well as new possibilities for melanoma patients.

Based on ICER’s evaluation, a significant reduction in the wholesale acquisition cost (WAC) of approved checkpoint inhibitors would be necessary to achieve a pre-determined value-based price benchmark.

While there have been large increases in the cost of new cancer treatments for patients with metastatic breast, lung, or kidney cancer, or chronic myeloid leukemia, researchers found that there were also large gains in life expectancy.