Policy

A chief medical officer for a major payer outlines the challenges making sure that certain high-cost therapies are directed to the patients who need them.

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.

Is transfusion dependence a barrier to hospice utilization among older patients with leukemia who are enrolled in Medicare?

With the increasing emergence of less expensive biologic alternatives, some health systems are making the switch. For a large healthcare system, the arrival of a cheaper alternative to filgrastim prompted the conversion to using tbo-filgrastim as the preferrred granulocyte-colony stimulating factor. The results were shared in a study published by the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy.

Authors of the study found that the mean total, chemotherapy, and physician costs were all lower in community settings compared with hospital-based settings for patients with breast, lung, and colorectal cancer. There were also fewer emergency department visits both 3 and 10 days following treatment.

A study published in JAMA analyzed 155 health conditions, 36 age and sex groups, and 6 types of care to determine the impact of population growth, population aging, disease prevalence or incidence, service utilizations, and service price and intensity on healthcare spending increases in the United States from 1996 to 2013.

Among the most anticipated sessions at the 2017 meeting of the American College of Rheumatology in San Diego, California was “The Great Debate: Biosimilars…to Switch, or Not to Switch? That Is the Question.”

The reform will adjust payment for drugs purchased through the program, relieve some burden for rural hospitals, and exempt rural sole community hospitals, certain cancer hospitals, and children's hospitals.

In addition to the cost, the excessive overuse of laboratory testing causes patient discomfort and can lead to hospital-acquired anemia, which results in additional testing, prolonged hospitalizations, unnecessary transfusions, and increased mortality for patients with cardiopulmonary diseases.

With biosimilars being an everyday headline, Jason Bernstein, Epocrates Lead Strategist, outlined key reasons for pharma's growing interest in biosimilar development and key differences between generics and biosimilars.

With the clinical and financial implications of high-cost medications, and their impact on health system revenue, it is of utmost importance for all key stakeholders to be engaged in the complex revenue cycle.

On Monday, California Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed into law SB 17, which seeks to generate greater transparency concerning drug pricing.

Federally qualified health centers face significant financial and competitive pressures, but executives reported in a recent survey that they have identified areas for improvement and are planning a path to success.

This study found that brand price at launch and generic entry overstates long-run average pharmaceutical costs, with and without accounting for medical cost offsets.

The Hospital-in-Home program implemented at the Veterans Affairs Pacific Islands Health Care System in Honolulu, Hawaii, is associated with reduced costs with no compromise in quality.

Technology innovation drives expenditures. A Michigan Medicine, IBM, and AirStrip partnership demonstrates the hospital’s role in developing transformative technologies that deliver value.

A new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation examines preliminary data on premium rates and plan offerings on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges.

The results of this study show that patient-reported data on health and healthcare can be useful in predicting high-cost patients when claims data for prior years are not available.

Price shopping for medications within a small geographic area can yield considerable cost savings for uninsured and insured consumers in high-deductible health plans.

Retail prices for commonly prescribed drugs are often absent from state prescription drug price websites, but when reported, can vary substantially.

In a survey of patients and visitors to a large academic medical center, middle-income respondents with private insurance reported more cost-related delays in care than those with public insurance.

A discussion at the 2017 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting addressed practical solutions to address the financial toxicity of cancer care and identified leads for future intervention studies aimed to prevent or reduce this burden.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have recognized that narrow provider networks are quite likely to exclude National Cancer Institute—Designated Cancer Centers or National Comprehensive Cancer Network Cancer Centers, which could prevent patient access to high-quality cancer care.

Severe hemophilia often results in a significant economic and psychological burden on patients, caregivers, and the healthcare system as a whole, according to recent research from Europe.

Evaluation of healthcare utilization and costs over 3 years for adults with insulin-requiring diabetes who transition from multiple daily insulin injections to insulin infusion pumps.

As cancer care moves to payment focused on improving value, payers are more often using regulation and incentive to improve the integration of palliative care into oncology practice.

Increasing accountable care organization savings is dependent on maximizing quality scores and increasing the number of beneficiaries while maintaining a low per-capita spend through efficiencies of care.

High-cost patients are only modestly concentrated in specific hospitals and healthcare markets.