Value-Based Care

San Antonio, TX—Many new drugs are currently in development for the treatment of patients with breast cancer. The following is a selection of drugs featured at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

The study “Impact of oophorectomy on cancer incidence and mortality in women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation” that was recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (Finch AP, et al. 2014 February 24 [Epub ahead of print]) provides an update of previous work by the same investigators on a similar population.

Phoenix, AZ—The staff at the Mayo Clinic are working to “bend the cost curve” and optimize resource utilization efficiency while continuing to provide high-quality care to their large population of patients, said Kari Bunkers, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer, Mayo Clinic Health System, and Medical Director, Mayo Clinic Office of Population Health Management (OPHM) at the American Medical Group Association 2013 Institute for Quality Leadership conference.

In a recent guest blog on the Harvard Business Review website, Toby Cosgrove, MD, President and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, suggested that value-based care represents a life-saving “breakthrough,” not unlike penicillin or decoding the human genome, by focusing on lowering costs and improving quality of care and outcomes as its main goals.

Hollywood, FL—Community oncology will not survive in the absence of novel management strategies and process improvements, according to Michael Kolodziej, MD, FACP, National Medical Director of Oncology Solutions, who offered his insights at the Third Annual Conference of the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care.

In the December 2012 issue of Value-Based Cancer Care (VBCC), several Editorial Board members addressed the recent events surrounding the cost of cancer drugs and the reduction of the price of ziv-aflibercept (Zaltrap). VBCC continued this discussion with Al B. Benson III, MD, FACP, FASCO.

With the fanfare of a New York Times Op-Ed piece by Peter B. Bach, MD, and colleagues, the announcement was made that Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) would exclude the new colorectal cancer drug ziv-aflibercept (Zaltrap) from its formulary.

The cost of cancer care is staggering. Global sales of cancer drugs alone are forecast to grow at a rate of 12% to 15% annually, reaching $75 billion to $80 billion by the end of this year, according to IMS Health.

We should all read with great interest the New York Times opinion piece by Peter B. Bach, MD, and colleagues from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on their rationale for not including ziv-aflibercept (Zaltrap) in its formulary for patients with metastatic or advanced colorectal cancer.