Dr Stephen Grubbs Explains How ASCO Is Modifying Its Value Framework

More than 400 comments were sent in regarding the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)'s Value Framework, and they will be incorporated as the framework evolves, explained Stephen Grubbs, MD, vice president for clinical affairs at ASCO.

Transcript (slightly modified)

Are there plans to use feedback from the field to modify the ASCO Value Framework?

So the publication was done last year with the idea that people would comment upon that, and there’s been over 400 comments sent in to ASCO on this, and they are being taken into consideration and there are modifications of the tool. And beyond the comments, the tool needs to get more sophisticated in what it's measuring and I’ll give you an example.

Right now we’re measuring the net health benefit based on the advantage you get from the treatment but also the toxicities of the drugs. But we need to expand the negative part of that into how does it affect your family? How does it affect your quality of life? Can we get patient-reported outcomes involved in all this? So this is going to become very, very sophisticated, but at least the skeleton is there to build on right now.

This is not ready for primetime, but the conversation is going on, the modifications are being made, and we hope to see this evolve into an actually usable instrument where you might have a software program in your office where you can sit there with that patient. Of course, when you get to the cost part of it that’s different for every patient. It’s what payers are willing to pay for that and then what is their responsibility part of that so you have to adjust that per patient.