Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
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…
How do you measure changes in quality of life for patients with cancer? Today we will review 3 different approaches: health state based, health state with age decrements, and health state with time-to-death (TTD) decrements. Health state based. One common approach is just to use the quality of life of a given health state. For…
Cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death in the US, just behind heart failure. Yet in recent years, we have seen that improved prevention, screening and treatment has helped to avert 3.5 million deaths in the US over the past 3 decades. Despite these gains, we do see that cancer death rates are highly…
That is the topic of a commentary I wrote with co-authors Joanna MacEwan and Farzad Ali, titled “Does COVID-19 Threaten the Progress Pharmaceuticals Have Made in Reducing Cancer Mortality Over the Last 20 Years?” An excerpt is below: Cancer mortality rates have fallen significantly over the last 20 years. Between 2000 and 2010, overall age-adjusted…
That is the finding from a recent paper by myself and co-authors Joanna MacEwan, Syvart Dennen, Rebecca Kee, Farzad Ali, and Katharine Batt. An excerpt from the paper is below: Between 2000 and 2016, deaths per 100,000 population across the 15 most common tumor types declined by 24%. Additionally, 10.2 new indications were approved per…
According to a paper by Stevens et al. (2020), the answer is ‘yes’. One clear reason why it would change is if the drug’s price changes. Even if that is not the case, however, the drug may be more or less effective over time. For instance, physicians may improve their ability to manage side effects…
Cancer is a horrible disease. Providing high quality care often means providing safe, effective and cost-effective treatments that meets a patient’s priority. Reaching these goals, however, is particularly challenging when treating older adults with cancer. A paper on this exact topic by Ramsdale et al. (2017) notes that: Cancer care delivery for older adults with…
Active service military need health care. How do they get it? For the 9.5 million active military beneficiaries and their families, the Military Health Service (MHS) provides the health care they need. Some of the medical care is provided at military facilities and some care is purchased through non-military (i.e., civilian) providers. A paper by…
That is the title of my recent piece in STAT News. Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration announced the creation of Project Facilitate. This pilot program facilitates access to innovative treatments for cancer that have not yet been approved by individuals who aren’t able to enroll in clinical trials. This move suggests that the…
An interesting paper from my colleagues at Precision in Medical Decision Making looks at how patients, physicians and nurses value different treatment attributes related to survival and treatment toxicity. The authors surveyed patients, oncologists, and oncology nurses using a combined conjoint analysis and discrete choice experiment survey approach. They found that: Virtually all patients preferred…