February 15th 2017
Watson for Oncology, the IBM "cognitive" computer tool for helping with clinical decisions, is making its debut this month at Jupiter Medical Center in Florida as a regular member of the armamentarium for fighting cancer, as opposed to being a prospective product on trial.
February 11th 2017
Not only are drug prices soaring with the arrival of many new therapies, but competition for the drug dispensing and drug infusion business is on the rise, Jeff Liticker, PharmD, of UT Southwestern Medical said in a recent talk about oncology drug issues sponsored by the Association of Community Cancer Centers.
February 2nd 2017
A new trend in the way pharmacy benefit managers are collecting fees from pharmacy providers is driving up drug costs, gouging point-of-sale pharmacy operations, and playing havoc with spending at CMS, according to reports from CMS and the Community Oncology Alliance.
January 30th 2017
Immuno-oncology drugs have the potential to improve the level of care in many respects, but they bring with them a host of problems related to implementation that require a completely new set of strategies.
January 29th 2017
The 340B Drug Pricing Program, designed to provide support for out-patient drug purchases, severely lacks federal oversight, said BRG Healthcare, the business advisory group, in a report sponsored by the Alliance for Integrity and Reform of 340B (AIR340B).
January 19th 2017
The Community Oncology Alliance got most of its 2016 Christmas list. CVS Caremark dropped its plan to cut physician-owned dispensaries out of Medicare Part D oral drug distribution, CMS eased off the gas pedal on the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, and the Medicare Part B Drug Payment Model has been discontinued for now.
January 14th 2017
Cota, a New York-based precision informatics company, has developed what it says will be a significant aid for oncology practices working to conform to the expectations of CMS’s Oncology Care Model, which is designed to encourage physicians to strive for better patient outcomes and lower costs.
December 30th 2016
For independent oncology practices, 2016 was a year of struggle—struggle to achieve new levels of reporting to CMS, and struggle to improve interaction with patients and coordination of care.
December 28th 2016
Boston-based Berg Health is attempting to do away with a traditional form of scientific inquiry in an attempt to find better answers.
December 17th 2016
Delivering patient-centered care is not an easy task in an increasingly complex environment, participants at the 4th Annual Institute for the Future of Oncology concluded at the June meeting.
Many things are happening with payer practices as a result of the plethora of new immuno-oncology agents.
CMS and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have confirmed the demise of the Medicare Part B Drug Payment Model "experiment" to cut margins paid to physicians on some of the most expensive drugs and introduce private sector thinking into drug purchasing and pricing systems.
December 16th 2016
After 2 years of reflecting on feedback from the medical community, the American Board of Internal Medicine has developed a new iteration of its Maintenance of Certification testing that it hopes will satisfy the needs of physicians.
December 15th 2016
To great fanfare, Hackensack Meridian Health of New Jersey and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center announced a co-branding partnership that they say would lead to highly fruitful collaborative research and make hundreds of clinical trial opportunities available to their patients.
December 10th 2016
The artificial intelligence computer program Watson for Oncology (WFO) achieved a high degree of concordance with tumor board recommendations in a double-blinded validation study in Bengaluru, India, according to results presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).
December 7th 2016
Bevacizumab has been granted FDA approval for platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer, based on findings from phase III trails: GOG-0213 and OCEANS.
November 28th 2016
Staff attrition generally does not come in the size and shape it did for a small New England practice that constitutes the last independent oncology practice in Maine.
November 25th 2016
If any doubts remained that oncology practices were not going to be specific targets in the hacking of medical data, a breach at Central Ohio Urology Group has set the record straight.
For years, linear accelerator technology has had to be encased in concrete walls 3 to 4 feet thick so as to protect people on the outside from exposure to radiation.
November 24th 2016
The change of administrations in Washington, DC may undermine the future of a proposal to revise Medicare Part B drug compensation, a plan that has been widely criticized in the oncological community because of the potential reduction in profit margins it entails.