August 2014, Vol 5, No 6

Milan, Italy—Older patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) gained a “clinically significant,” if not statistically significant improvement in survival when treated with azacitidine (Vidaza) rather than with conventional therapy, reported Hervé Dombret, MD, hematologist, Hôpital Saint Louis in Paris, France, at the European Hematology Association meeting.
Read Article

In April, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) released a policy statement recommending how to fix the 340B Drug Pricing Program.
Read Article

Sandra Wade first e-mailed me on July 15, 2011. As you can see in the excerpts from her correspondence with me below, she asked me to contact her oncologist and let her know that as a breast cancer survivor, Sandra had suffered more than she should have, because she was not referred for rehabilitation services.
Read Article

Telephone-based support programs are capable of reducing cancer-related medical costs by 10% to 30%, according to results of the first nurse-led study of the cost impact of telephonic case management in oncology.
Read Article

Chicago, IL—The implementation of collaborative, secondary clinical pathway programs can improve outcomes and can lower costs when providers are already participating in another payer-sponsored pathway program. This conclusion comes from a study published online in conjunction with the 2014 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting.
Read Article

Chicago, IL—Contrary to common belief, there appears to be little demand on the part of patients with cancer for unsuitable, high-cost, low-value tests or therapies.
Read Article

Chicago, IL—Hospital readmissions in patients with cancer reflect the high burden of this disease, which is often refractory and, therefore, readmission is not reasonably preventable.
Read Article

Chicago, IL—Oncologists responding to a national electronic survey believe that discussing out-of-pocket (OOP) costs of therapy with patients is important, and that OOP costs and societal cost of therapy will play a larger role in cancer treatment decisions over the next 5 years.
Read Article

Chicago, IL—Even after adjusted for improved outcomes, newer anticancer drugs are more expensive than older agents, said Rena Conti, PhD, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Economics, University of Chicago, at the 2014 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting.
Read Article

The FDA issued an expanded indication for ibrutinib (Imbruvica; Pharmacyclics) for the treatment of patients with CLL who have a deletion in chromosome 17 (17p deletion), which results in poor response to standard CLL therapies.
Read Article

Page 3 of 4