Value Peer-spectives

>At the end of February, I had the opportunity to attend the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS)14 Annual Conference, which was held in Orlando, FL. Attended by more than 30,000 committed vendors, healthcare administrators, providers, politicians, scientists, and others, the meeting provided a great deal of insight into the health information community’s past accomplishments, the present state of the art, and expectations for the future.

This collaborative program is based on evidence-based decision support in cancer care, using personalized medicine and realigning payment structure with the goal of increasing patient treatment coordination, improving quality outcomes, and reducing overall costs of cancer care.

Researchers at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center have announces a new collaboration with Pfizer to develop immune-based approaches to new therapies for cancer. This new effort is based on M.D. Anderson’s Moon Shots Program that aims to reduce cancer deaths significantly in the future, using the 6 moon shots that target 8 types of difficult-to-treat cancer.

Responding to the relentless economic pressures on patients and oncologists and the ever-escalating costs of cancer care delivery, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), in collaboration with the Value in Cancer Care Task Force, is developing a working definition of “value” in oncology, as well as identifying how to incorporate the implications of that approach into clinical decision-making in patient care.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has launched a clinical trial to determine whether selecting therapies based on genetic mutations can improve outcomes in patients with metastatic solid tumors.

The Patient Protection and Af­fordable Care Act (ACA) has been a major topic in the news of late. In addition to providing better healthcare and allowing the uninsured to obtain affordable insurance coverage, the ACA has provided funding for outcomes research and healthcare innovation.

The recent Institute of Medicine report “Delivering High-Quality Cancer Care: Charting a New Course for a System in Crisis” addressed the important issues of delivering high-quality cancer care, including end-of-life care.

>Phoenix, AZ—The degree of patient satisfaction with healthcare is becoming paramount in the new era of value-based care, according to James Merlino, MD, Chief Experience Officer, and Associate Chief of Staff, Patient Experience Office, Cleveland Clinic Health System (CCHS), OH, who discussed high-value healthcare at the American Medical Group Association 2013 Institute for Quality Leadership conference.

Empire Genomics, an emerging molecular diagnostics company focused on cancer diagnostics, has recently received approval from the New York State Department of Health for its diagnostic test facility.

A new collaborative initiative among Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has been established to create treatment pathways based on precision (or personalized) medicine for patients with advanced cancer and to try to accelerate the development of personalized therapies.