Articles

San Diego—In the first study to estimate the budgetary impact of accepting pemetrexed as maintenance therapy for non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), researchers found that adopting the drug did not significantly affect a health plan’s budget.

San Diego—Pharmacogenomic (PGx) testing seeks to optimize treatment by ensuring patients receive the bestsuited drug based on interindividual genetic variation. Currently, no published data exist on how this may influence the appropriateness of oncology treatment within a utilization management program. Seeking to remedy this, researchers from CVS Caremark (Northbrook, IL) analyzed data from their own utilization management program, within which PGx testing requirements are implemented for certain oncology therapies and specific indications.

San Diego—Payers believe that prescribing information, national guidelines, and prospective controlled randomized trials (PCRTs) are the most useful sources of information about oncology drugs, according to researchers from Genentech, Inc (South San Francisco).

San Diego—For health plans attempting to cut costs, instituting higher out-of-pocket (OOP) payments for patients taking oral oncology drugs may not be a prudent solution, according to research presented at the AMCP’s annual meeting.

Presenting the findings at the annual meeting of the AMCP, lead researcher Shetal Desai, PharmD, discussed how NCH decreased the number of disputed claims and recovered more than $1 million in drug replacement from manufacturer patient-assistance programs across 18 months after bringing a managed care pharmacist on board.

San Diego—Despite increasing interest in cost-effectiveness (CE) research, the groups conducting these analyses continue to use models that are very different from each other, hampering a more precise understanding of drug comparability.

Even before enactment of national healthcare reform initiatives, development and implementation of a variety of comparative effectiveness research (CER) was well under way, even if it was not specifically called comparative effectiveness.

Recent articles in the New England Journal of Medicine¹ and the Journal of the American Medical Association² note the tremendous increase in the cost of cancer care, which has at least doubled since 1990. The reasons for this steep increase have been attributed to the release and utilization of new medications, in tandem with more sophisticated surgery and radiation techniques.

Washington, DC—Health information technology (IT) and informatics are fundamental to all comparative effectiveness research (CER), Amy Abernethy, MD, associate director of the Duke Comprehensive Medical Center and founder and director of the Duke Cancer Care Research Program, told attendees at a session of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) 101st Annual Meeting.

With the inclusion of $1.1 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvest ment Act of 2009 for comparative effectiveness research (CER), this topic has suddenly become a matter of great importance in the clinical and research communities.