Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Clearly choosing treatments that extend expected survival is important, but survival expectations are not the only factor that matters to cancer patients. A 2017 NCCN policy report–based on the findings from a working group–identifies a number of factors: Patients, for example, may view high-value care as any combination of trust, transparency, and effective communication with…
In recent years, a number of organizations have developed value frameworks to assess new treatments. These organizations include the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), Memorial Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center (Drug Abacus), American Society for Clinical Oncologists (ASCO), National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), European Society of Medical Oncology (Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale).…
NCCN recently released a new approach to measure the value of cancer medicines. The approach–known as Evidence Blocks–evaluates medications on 5 dimensions: Efficacy of regimens, Safety of regimens, Quality and quantity of evidence for regimens, Consistency of evidence for regimens, and Affordability of regimens. Each criteria is ranked on a 1 to 5 block scale.…