Tony Hagen

The kinase inhibitors sorafenib and lenvatinib have significantly altered the treatment paradigm for patients with advanced radioactive iodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer in both older and younger populations.

B-cell pathway inhibitors have shown impressive survival benefits for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, but require careful monitoring and possible suspension to control adverse events.

The advent of ICD-10 turned out to be a lot like the Y2K scare of 15 years ago when a structural programming characteristic dating from the dawn of the computer age seemed likely to cause the digital world to grind to a halt.

ASCO has issued a position paper against "site-neutral" Medicare payments that would reduce the wide disparity between hospital costs and physician practice costs for similar services.

The NCCN announced a new series of cancer regimen guidelines that incorporate cost considerations to aid and facilitate broader discussion between physicians and patients about treatment.

The jury is still out on whether use of an algorithm to help classify risk levels in ovarian cancer can improve overall survival but a company is already marketing the system in Britain and plans to bring it to the United States before the end of the year.

The door isn't fully closed on the acute oncology drug shortages of 4 years ago, observers say, though the FDA has established rules for greater disclosure by manufacturers and continues to tweak guidelines that would require far more information about manufacturing processes and production issues.

The attempt by Turing Pharmaceuticals to boost the price of the anti-parasitic pyrimethamine (Daraprim) 5500% is now under reconsideration, but it shows up the flaws inherent in a fragmented payment system.

The attempt by Turing Pharmaceuticals to boost the price of the anti-parasitic pyrimethamine (Daraprim) 5500% is now under reconsideration, owing to a firestorm of public and institutional protest, but it doesn't solve the problem of no limits on what manufacturers can charge and the lack of drug pricing transparency.

The American Board of Internal Medicine says it is working to incorporate a set of changes to its physician Certification and Maintenance of Certification requirements that physicians have complained are out of step with the realities of their work.

Costs under the 340B program have ballooned far beyond earlier estimates, based on certain aspects of the program that have not been looked at closely.

The experiment with bundled care in oncology is moving forward despite mixed results and lingering concerns about the administrative difficulty of implementation, potential care compromises, and whether innovation can thrive under fixed payments.

Getting ready for ICD-10 has involved a huge commitment to staff training and also much attention to the finer details.

New drug candidate necitumumab, which is being reviewed by the FDA as a treatment for patients with locally advanced or metastatic squamous non-small cell lung cancer, received a low cost-effectiveness evaluation in a study published in JAMA Oncology.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors can be of significant value in combatting recurrent and metastatic triple negative breast cancer, Rita Nanda, MD, told physicians at the recent 14th Annual International Congress on the Future of Breast Cancer.

As cancer drugs soar in price, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network is introducing cost as a measure of the overall value of a therapy, following the trail of ASCO and a doctor from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in attempting to put a lid on drug inflation.

Costs of radiation treatment for breast, lung, and prostate cancer patients vary greatly based on reasons not connected to patient characteristics.

There is clear evidence that obesity at the time of diagnosis of operable breast cancer is associated with an increased risk of distant recurrence, specifically for HR–positive, HER2-negative disease, and oncologists should consider helping patients better manage their weight as part of their treatment plans.

Many healthcare reforms are dramatically changing the payment landscape for oncologists.

Next-generation sequencing is an advance in medicine that has many physicians and researchers excited, but substantial concern remains about the usefulness of the data generated.

Oncologists can only stand by wistfully as their documentation needs grow and current electronic health record technology remains inadequate to the task of easing the workload.

A slate of 118 well-known cancer experts have signed their names to a list of recommended drug pricing reforms in hopes of curbing the soaring costs of cancer care and spurring a grassroots movement to combat the trend.

With the cost of newer immunotherapy drugs soaring into the tens of thousands of dollars per month, payers are under increasing pressure to control spending and are tightening the spigot in various ways, oncology professionals told OncLive in a series of interviews.

ASCO unveiled a drug valuation methodology that found no added health benefit from a $9200 per month trial chemotherapy regimen compared with an $800 per month standard-of-care therapy.

With bipartisan support, legislation aimed at reducing the high copays for self-injectable and oral cancer drugs was introduced in the House and Senate.

Social media – which broadly defined encompasses many different forms of Web-based exchange – has the potential to make a deep imprint on oncology practice, but many clinicians are still reluctant to participate.

At the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, the much heralded CancerLinQ big data system for helping oncologists more clearly understand treatment patterns and options was offered for demonstration in advance of its rollout.

PracticeNET is an initiative emerging from ASCO's Clinical Affairs Department designed to help practices learn from one another's successes as they move farther away from fee-for-service and toward increasingly cost-effective models of care.

ASCO has proposed a series of payment reforms that it says would significantly increase physician pay and the breadth of patient services available while lowering the overall cost of cancer care.

The rising number of oral oncology drugs that can be supplied through pharmacy networks rather than administered in clinical settings, such as intravenous drugs, has many physicians worried that they are losing control of an important part of the therapeutic process.