Clinical Pathways

While FoundationOne CDx, the comprehensive companion diagnostic test for solid tumors, gives patients the ability to be accurately matched with a targeted therapy, it also has potential benefits for patients with a less common types of cancers, said Stuart Goldberg, MD, chief scientific officer, Cota, in an interview with The American Journal of Managed Care®.

Clinical pathways can help providers avoid delays with prior authorization by ensuring that all the necessary information is there, explained Kathleen Lokay, president and CEO of Via Oncology.

Electronic health records can be used to measure and record how guidelines are being implemented and followed, but more government intervention is needed to regulate electronic health records and set standards, Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD, FACP, FRACP, president, Carolinas HealthCare System's Levine Cancer Institute.

The authors observed a marked shift toward treatment of higher-risk subsets of younger postmenopausal women (with prior fracture and/or with osteoporosis), and away from women at lower risk.

Universal gene expression profiling of patients with stage II breast cancer resulted in outpatient savings of $11,000 (inclusive of testing costs) within 6 months of initiation of medical therapy.

Currently, clinical guidelines offer little guidance on deintensifying care, which is critical for balancing overuse and underuse of services.

Adherence to clinical guidelines in practice is often suboptimal and controversial. This study compares actual statin utilization and cost with full adoption of major clinical guidelines in a real-world population.

A new pathway uses a multidisciplinary team to help reduce 30-day heart failure readmissions, explained Amar Bhakta, MD, of Rush University Medical Center.

US healthcare spending is on the rise, and is expected to comprise over 20% of the gross domestic product by 2025. Current expenditures are expected to double by 2060 if the pace of spending in the past decade continues. In this healthcare landscape, in vitro diagnostics (IVD) have increasingly become the subject of scrutiny, as IVDs are perceived as contributing to soaring costs.

Including the modified brentuximab antibody in the treatment regimen improved modified progression-free survival by 5%, although the rates of neutropenia and infections were higher in patients administered the brentuximab-containing regimen.

Physician belief in the art of medicine is running up against the challenge of costs being shifted to patients and health systems and the desire of payers to have less variation in care, said Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD, FACP, FRACP, president, Carolinas HealthCare System's Levine Cancer Institute.

WIth different societies and organizations releasing contrary guidelines around breast cancer screening, experience with past patients or friends and family members could influence physicians' decisions around when to start screening mammography.

The FDA has approved Foundation Medicine's FoundationOne CDx, the first-of-a-kind comprehensive companion diagnostic test for solid tumors. The test looks for hundreds of cancer genes, providing healthcare professionals with a more complete picture of what's causing tumor growth and guidance for treatment decisions.