Cancer Centers and the Integrated Health Delivery Systems and the Cancer Care Value Perspectives

Conference Correspondent

At this session, a distinguished panel, moderated by William McGivney, PhD, Managing Principal at McGivney Global Advisors, engaged in an informative discussion related to the current challenges that cancer centers face as they try to deliver high-quality care in an ever-changing care delivery system that includes the use of more expensive oncology technologies, such as CAR T-cell therapies.

Niesha Griffith, RPh, MS, FASHP, Advising Partner at McGivney Global Advisors, spoke of the complex decision-making process associated with the integration of CAR T-cell therapies into her organization’s system. She explained that it is vitally important that everyone at the organization understand their roles in the process. She also noted that, because of the logistics involved, the integration of CAR-T therapy has led to improved collaboration and communication among departments that didn’t interact much in the past. “I think the launch of CAR-T was a game-changer in terms of how we provide care. It’s good that we spent so much time and resources on this, because the next one is going to be easier,” she said.

Marc Earl, PharmD, BCOP, Assistant Director, Pharmacy, Cleveland Clinic, said that the integration of high-cost novel therapies has become very complicated. “We have approximately 15 to 20 people who are helping to manage the CAR T-cell process from delivery, storage, regulatory, pharmacy, so it is incredibly complex. We want to be able to provide the highest level of care and our physicians want to use products that are newly approved and very effective, so the challenge is to balance the financial aspect with these other aspects because we have to remain solvent,” he said.

Myla Maloney, Vice President, Strategic Supplier Engagement at Premier, Inc, shared how her organization can provide data to help patients, hospitals, and manufacturers in the decision-making process. “Real-world evidence is what is going to tell you what is happening from an operation, financial, and clinical perspective. We have a healthcare database that represents 1000 hospitals and hospital outpatient entities that allows them to look for trends that cannot be seen with randomized, controlled trials. We are looking at gene therapies and utilization of the database and what is happening with systems that are using it. It gives them utilization of clinical data as well as very valuable cost data that allow us, in collaboration with others, to do some analysis on it. This, in turn, allows us to go back to these hospitals and advise them of what they should be doing,” she said.

Related Articles