Oncology Business Management

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is bringing unprecedented changes to how health care is paid for in the US, and both primary care physicians and specialists need to understand how these changes will affect their revenues.

Spending on 47 currently available oral oncologic drugs has increased from $940 million in the first quarter of 2006 to $1.4 billion in the third quarter of 2011, according to results of a study by Rena M. Conti, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Chicago.

While biomarker-based tools designed to guide the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer are emerging at an extraordinarily rapid rate, they are not exploding in the same practice-changing way in all genitourinary cancers.

In 2014, the amount of medical and other information has only increased, and mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets make it even easier to access that data.

Although the ICD-10 launch was moved to October 1, 2015, vendors and health plans look to be making some progress on the switchover. The same can't be said for physician providers, however.

In July, UnitedHealthcare (UHC) reported that an innovative program using bundled payment for cancer care resulted in an impressive 34% reduction in medical costs when compared with costs for a control group

A Biologics License Application has been submitted to the FDA for the bispecific T-cell engager (BiTE) antibody blinatumomab as a treatment for adult patients with Philadelphia-negative (Ph-) relapsed/refractory B-precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)

Tadd Lazarus, MD, Chief Medical Officer, QIAGEN, provides an overview of companion diagnostics.

As precision medicine continues to evolve in cancer care, the development of highly sophisticated tests that leverage the explosion of knowledge about the molecular and protein characteristics of an individual patient's tumor has emerged as its own scientific frontier.

High pretreatment levels of serum VEGF-A and TGF-β1 indicated significantly worse disease-free survival (DFS) following neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

Does Medicare coverage for patients with cancer match up to what they actually want covered? There appears to be a mismatch between covered benefits and beneficiary preferences that involves quality of life and financial burden of care, according to a study from Duke University.

Experts Touch On Oncotype DX, Other Assays During Peer Exchange