The cancer tax

An ambitious paper by Chen et al. (2023) published last week aim to estimate the economic burden of cancer across 204 countries between 2020 and 2050 . The authors find that cancer’s economic burden is equivalent to an annual tax of 0.55% of global GDP. The full results are below. The estimated global economic cost…

Single Arm Trials for FDA Drug Approvals in Oncology

These are becoming increasingly common. Agrawal et al. (2022) use data between 2002-2021, and found that FDA approved: …176 new malignant hematology and oncology indications based on single-arm trials, including 116 accelerated approvals (AAs) and 60 traditional approvals. Overall, 87 approvals (49%) were for new molecular entities or original biologics and 89 (51%) were supplemental…

Enhancing Oncology Model: Payment Methodology

Back in July, I provided an overview of the Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM). Today I build upon that post focusing largely on CMS’s EOM’s Payment Methodology. I use a Q&A format as well. What is the goal of EOM? According to CMS “EOM is a CMMI alternative payment model designed to advance health equity, promote…

What is the Yost Index?

The Yost Index is a measure of socioeconomic status (SES) across geographic areas. The index was developed by Kathleen Yost and coauthors in their 2001 paper titled “Socioeconomic status and breast cancer incidence in California for different race/ethnic groups.” There are seven key inputs to creating the Yost index were calculated at the Census block…

The benefit of HPV vaccination

In part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination have become a hot button issue. This is true even for non-COVID vaccines that have proven significant health benefits, such as those for human papillomavirus vaccines (HPV). Although betweeen 2016 and 2021 the share of teenagers receiving their HPV vaccination series increased from 60% to 77%, Bloomberg…

What is the Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM)?

The Oncology Care Model (OCM) is dead. The Oncology Care Model was a voluntary, alternative payment model (APM), that “included financial and performance accountability for episodes of care surrounding chemotherapy administration to cancer patients.” OCM expired at the end of June 2022, and will be replaced by the Enhancing Oncology Model. EOM is a also…