Health Policy

New Orleans, LA—According to the American Medical Association (AMA) and many oncologists, the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) diagnostic coding system will be a needless and expensive burden to oncology practices, without enhancing patient care.

American adults would be willing to pay a median of $263 for a perfect prostate cancer prediction test and $232 for a perfect breast cancer prediction test, according to a recent survey (Neumann PJ, et al. Health Econ. 2012;21:238-251).

Miami, FL—Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing of genetic tests represents personalized medicine in evolution. High-throughput genetic technologies have made it possible to evaluate individuals at a relatively affordable price, but a number of technologic, social, regulatory, and ethical issues must first be settled before DTC genetic testing takes personalized medicine to new heights.

On November 30, 2011, the Office of the Inspector Gen­eral (OIG) of the US Depart­ment of Health and Human Services issued an advisory opinion (No. 11-18) to the web-based physician practice service provider athenahealth, tacitly approving the company’s new online service athenaCoordinator.

Medical practices in the United States spend much more money and time dealing with third-party payers than do Canadian practices, according to a recent report (Morra D, et al. Health Aff. 2011;30:1443-1450).

On July 29, 2011, a 3-judge panel from the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit invalidated some patents held by Myriad Genetics and the University of Utah Research Foundation for methods of analyzing individuals’ gene sequences for the presence of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, but upheld other related patents in a reversal of a lower court ruling.

In September 2011, the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) issued a new report, “AACR Cancer Progress Report 2011” on the current state of cancer research and the implications of recent cuts in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

The decision this month (October 2011) by the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) to recommend against a prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-based screening for prostate cancer in healthy men¹ has caused quite a stir both in and outside of medical circles, reminding many people of the task force’s 2009 recommendation against routine breast cancer screenings for women under age 50 years.

ACOs are believed to hold the potential for addressing variation in quality and costs of cancer care, but their impact will depend on buy-in and leadership among oncologists, according to David Miller, MD, MPH, a urologic surgeon and health services researcher at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He addressed this topic during the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists.