All News

A new study published by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics finds that reimbursement approaches based on cost-per-quality-adjusted-life-year measures rather than drug effectiveness may limit access to innovative cancer treatments.

Aetna Inc. has agreed to reduce out-of-pocket payments for most HIV and AIDS medicines after pressure from an advocacy group, revising coverage that had some patients paying $1000 a month for the drugs.

Two studies, published last week in Journal of Clinical Oncology, report improved survival as well as reduced caregiver burden following early initiation of palliative care in advanced cancer patients.

A provision of the ACA that calls for the federal government to cover a higher share of Texas' administrative costs will help cover $102 million of a $338 million shortfall in Medicaid costs.

Employers are expanding their corporate health improvement and wellness programs to improve employee health and create a more positive workplace culture.

Increased insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act not only did not cause a sharp increase in new patients, but there has not been any change in how sick patients were who sought care, according to a report from athenahealth and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

A study of people who needed additional care for their low back pain, found that the ones sent first for MRIs were more likely to have surgery or injections, see a specialist, or visit an emergency room than those who were first sent to physical therapists.

The pharmaceutical industry mounted a new challenge to a federal plan that would require generic drug companies to take the initiative to update their labels to warn consumers whenever health risks were discovered.

Buried deep within large datasets are answers to long-standing questions about healthcare in the United States: Why is it so expensive? Why do prices vary so widely across the country?

Last year, more than half of working Americans reportedly checked prices for the health services they required. Healthcare providers and policy makers are scrambling to meet consumer demand for accurate pricing, and it's not easy.

A one-minute look at managed care news during the week of March 23, 2015, including the 5-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act and another step toward value-based payments.

The failure of federal agencies to implement 25 sets of "significant" recommendations from the HHS Office of Inspector General has cost US taxpayers and beneficiaries some $24 billion.

Although the Supreme Court's decision on King v. Burwell could remove subsidies from the federal marketplace, Americans prefer HealthCare.gov over the state-run exchanges, according to poll results from right-wing advocacy group Foundation for Government Accountability.

The overall death rate from high blood pressure in the United States has increased 23% since 2000, even as the death rate from all other causes has dropped 21%, health officials reported.

The overhaul would fix the Medicare reimbursement system and align payment with CMS' current efforts to reward value-based care. For the first time, the wealthiest seniors would be asked to pay higher premiums.

Technological innovations in medicine can help treat illness and improve health, but they also drive healthcare spending higher.

When Aledade launched in 2014, founder Farzad Mostashari, MD, former national coordinator for health information technology (IT), was spending about half the time talking to doctors not about his new company, but about value-based payments and what accountable care organizations were.

Speaking to an audience of national quality measurement experts, CMS's chief medical officer spotlights projects that have bolstered both the pace of cost reduction and quality improvement efforts.

During his closing keynote at the World Health Care Congress, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich echoed the sessions of the previous 3 days by discussing current and future change in healthcare.

Links between cardiorespiratory fitness and cardiovascular events are well-established. More recently, researchers are turning their attention to the connections between fitness and certain cancers.

As patents on some of the most lucrative medicines began to expire, many companies shifted money to rare-disease drugs, knowing that those medicines cost less to develop and will face limited competition.

The Global Cancer Project Map is an interactive online database that allows users to search for cancer experts and research projects by country and by cancer type, and then to initiate contact with project principal investigators and program directors.

The adoption of the Affordable Care Act's medical loss ratio provision, which requires insurers spend 80%-85% of premiums on medical care and quality improvement, has yielded large benefits for consumers from 2011 to 2013.

The study, published in The Journal of Community and Supportive Oncology, discovered cancer survivors perceive gaps in their care with respect to reviewing information, asking questions, obtaining answers, and making decisions.

San Francisco has taken a big step toward becoming the first major US city to require drug makers to fund and administer a citywide take-back program in which consumers can bring unused and unexpired medicines to drop-off destinations for disposal.

The study found that thiazolidinediones, commonly used to treat individuals suffering from type 2 diabetes, activate the PPARY' receptors in the hypothalamus, which in turn triggers food hoarding, food intake.

The authors however cautioned that we still lack an understanding of biomarker-driven patient selection for PD-1 and PD-L1 agent. Adequate knowledge of the mechanism of action of these immuno-oncology agents could help optimize therapy, they add.

The ENABLE trial, conducted in rural regions of Vermont and New Hampshire, reports a positive impact on the 1-year survival of advanced cancer patients. A parallel study, ENABLE III, reported benefits to caregivers following early introduction of palliative care in these advanced cancer patients.

Currently, Keytruda is approved for patients with advanced melanoma previously treated with Yervoy and, in some patients, another type of drug as well. That second- and third-line status limits the number of patients eligible for the drug.

The NCI wants to encourage clinical trial investigators to review data from their completed clinical trials and treating oncologists to look back in their patient records to identify potential cases of exceptional responses and submit them for consideration in the initiative.