ASCO 2015 Highlights

As payers focus on the rising cancer care spend, they are turning to tools previously applied to other diseases. Each seems to have potential, but upon closer review, these have fundamental shortcomings when used for cancer.

Baltimore, MD—The preliminary results of a 2009 survey on cancer care trends among community hospital cancer centers indicates the growing impact of the recession, with data showing a greater inability of patients to pay for cancer care and a freezing of plans to purchase new equipment.

Baltimore, MD—Comparative effectiveness research (CER) is at the forefront of new cost-control efforts, according to experts speaking at a panel discussion at the Asso ciation of Community Cancer Centers’ (ACCC) 36th Annual National Meeting.

Baltimore, MD—Although majortechnological advances continue in the diagnostic imaging arena, heightenedconcern over radiation overdoses,steep prices for equipment, andquestions about whether the newtechnologies will be reimbursed posechallenges for the field.

Baltimore, MD—In light of ongoing discussions on healthcare and its reform in the United States, an examination of how care is financed and delivered in other parts of the world could provide a useful contrast for our own national deliberations.

The 2007 annual meeting summary of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) succinctly highlighted the issue of variability in care.

San Francisco, CA—The popularity of minimally invasive radical prostatectomy (MIRP), intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), and of brachytherapy combined with IMRT for prostate cancer started to take off after 2002, a new database analysis has confirmed.

Barcelona—Survival for patients with metastatic breast cancer has improved dramatically in the last 20 years, especially in the subgroup of patients with HER2-positive tumors, according to research presented at the 7th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC7).

At a roundtable held during the NCCN’s 15th Annual Conference, moderator Clifford Goodman, PhD, Senior Vice President at The Lewin Group, predicted, “The appropriate use of evidence-based guidelines is on a collision course with the financial nonsustainability of the healthcare system.”

Researchers from the University of California and the University of California San Diego (UCSD) have begun working on a prototype “cyberinfrastructure” that would allow cancer researchers to collect and interpret data from multiple sources to compare the effectiveness of preventive measures, drugs, treatments, and interventions during the course of clinical trials.