Latest Conference Content

Healthcare futurist Joe Flower discusses the need to look at the bigger picture when trying to change the way we deliver cancer care.

Healthcare futurist Joe Flower opened up the Association of Community Cancer Centers 45th Annual Meeting and Cancer Center Business Summit, held March 20-22 in Washington, DC, with a vision of a healthcare system that provides better quality care at a lower cost that is more easily accessible for all stakeholders.

While there is currently a presence of technology in healthcare, the future holds much more promise, said Allen Lichter, MD, FASCO, senior partner of TRG Healthcare.

Value-based insurance design (VBID) aligns patient cost sharing with the value of clinical services, so that patients pay less for high-value services and more for unnecessary, low-value services. While there has been increased interest in VBID, with CMS expanding the VBID demonstration in Medicare Advantage to all 50 states, the situation on the state exchanges is different: The plan has to be cost neutral, so in order to remove cost sharing for high-value services, cost sharing has to increase for other, low-value services.

The INFINITY trial, presented at the 68th Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology, tracked hypertension, brain lesions, and gait in groups of older seniors who had their systolic blood pressure managed to either 130 mm Hg or 145 mm Hg. Results showed significant differences in brain lesions between the 2 groups after 3 years.

New results presented at the American College of Cardiology's 68th Annual Scientific Session find a high-dose fish oil pill reduced the risk for first and future cardiovascular events among patients taking statins by 30%. The early results grabbed headlines last fall in part because researchers aren't entirely sure how the capsule works.

New findings show reduced hospitalizations for a wide group of patients with heart failure. For high-risk patients with reduced ejection fraction, the drug appears to cut deaths, but more studies will answer these questions.

More than a decade after an FDA mandate for cardiovascular outcomes trials, cardiologists say insights gained on how 2 new drug classes affect heart failure in diabetes should be used to prevent complications. Several sessions at the 68th Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology addressed this topic.

The AUGUSTUS trial was designed to guide clinicians in treating patients with complex heart problems who are typically left out of other clinical trials. Results were presented Sunday at the 68th Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology, held in New Orleans, Louisiana.

While the high price of drugs is an issue, what is really important is the actual cost patients are faced with at the pharmacy counter, said Ted Okon, executive director of the Community Oncology Alliance, and Daniel Klein, president and executive director of the Patient Access Network Foundation, at the University of Michigan Center for Value-Based Insurance Design (V-BID), V-BID Summit.

A session at the 68th American College of Cardiology Scientific Session continues the ongoing debate whether a CMS reimbursement model has contributed to rising mortality in patients with heart failure.

The 68th American College of Cardiology Scientific Session and Exposition opens with a study that suggests the Apple Watch can detect atrial fibrillation with a reasonable degree of accuracy, giving people an opportunity to get in touch with their doctor before a serious event like a stroke.

In recent years, the big news on the first day of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Scientific Session and Exposition has involved a therapy—usually an expensive cholesterol drug with a name almost no one could pronounce: proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) inhibitors. This year, it's tech, and an easy-to-pronounce name: Apple.

The concept of value is a well-known topic among health policy experts, the payer community, and policy makers, but patients do not necessarily have the same idea of what value means. When discussions about removing low-value care from the system to save money come up, patients might get the wrong idea of what is going on and why.

There are similarities between the challenges of accessing good cancer care in rural areas of the United States and Rwanda, such as poverty, transportation, and lack of routine care, said Lawrence N. Shulman, MD, director of the Center for Global Cancer Medicine at the Abramson Cancer Center, and professor of Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

The Virginia Center for Health Innovation (VCHI) is receiving a $2.2 million grant from Arnold Ventures to launch a 3-year statewide pilot to reduce the use of low-value care in the state of Virginia.

There has always been interest in bundled payments, and now the industry is moving toward implementing more, explained Scott Hewitt, vice president, payment strategy and innovation, UnitedHealthcare.

Despite a patient's vigilance, there is an unpredictable risk of an accidental reaction from an exposure, explained Brian Vickery, MD, associate professor of pediatrics at Emory University and director of the Food Allergy Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

There is a lot involved if an accountable care organization (ACO) decides to switch from Medicare Shared Savings (MSSP) to Medicare Advantage, but Medicare Advantage offers more benefit design flexibility, explained Kim Kauffman, MPH, vice president of value-based care at Summit Medical Group.

Researchers are encouraged by a set of peanut allergy immunotherapy data released Sunday at the 2019 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting, but they said that more discoveries are needed to understand which treatment might be best suited for patients.

There are greater awareness efforts taking place to educate other specialists on referring patients who are having suspected allergic reactions to the appropriate allergists, who can do a fuller evaluation, said Scott P. Commins, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine, at the University of North Carolina.

Some children treated with egg oral immunotherapy (OIT) are likely to continue eating and tolerating egg 5 years after treatment, according to research that may someday lead to the development of biomarkers to predict who will respond to OIT. The research was presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

Two abstracts presented Saturday at The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology 2019 Annual Meeting, held February 22-25 in San Francisco, California, discussed how formulary switching can affect outcomes for patients with severe persistent asthma, as well as how improving outcomes may be associated with increased quality measures.

Three studies presented Saturday at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology 2019 Annual Meeting, held February 22-25 in San Francisco, California, discussed different topics related to hereditary angioedema and treatment with subcutaneous injection of C1-esterase inhibitor (C1-INH).

Two abstracts presented Saturday at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology 2019 Annual Meeting, held February 22-25 in San Francisco, California, covered various links among economics, asthma control, and medication use.

Data about who is affected by sesame allergy, the ninth allergen in the United States, were released in an effort to convince the FDA to label it as a major food allergen.

Even when there are treatment failures, the knowledge gained through food allergy studies helps to move the field forward, explained Robert A. Wood, MD, director, Pediatric Allergy and Immunology, Johns Hopkins Medicine; 2018-2019 president, American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI).

Not only are there more dollars being place in value-based contracts, but the healthcare community is starting to see the benefits of these programs, explained Scott Hewitt, vice president, payment strategy and innovation, UnitedHealthcare.