Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
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…
That is the title of a paper I just published at Value in Health with Suepattra G. May, Lauren M. Zhao, Katalin Bognar, Yong Yuan, John R. Penrod, and John A. Romley. The subtitle is A Stated Preference Survey of Adults Diagnosed With and Without Lung Cancer. The full abstract is below: Objectives: To compare…
Why is the cost of cancer treatments growing so much in recent years? A new paper in the American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC) by my at Precision Health Economics colleague Jesse Sussell and co-authors (2019) has an explanation using data between 1997 and 2015 on cancer prices and the size of each treatment’s indicated…
Stereotypically, the U.S. health system is seen as one that is expensive and inefficient, but one where patients do get the fastest access to new innovation. However, does that prove true in reality? A paper by Zhang et al. (2017) attempts to answer this question by looking at 45 oncology drugs approved by the FDA…
In the past Medicare has reimbursed physicians that administer Part B drugs–typically injectable medications administered in a physician’s office–at 6% of the drug’s cost. The 6% aims to cover the cost of purchasing and storing the drug as well as administering it. Because physician reimbursement is proportional to the cost of the drug, physicians have…
My employer, the Precision Medicine Group, recently made a new acquisition. Details are in this press release and the excerpt below. Precision for Medicine, part of the Precision Medicine Group, announced today that it has executed a binding agreement to acquire ACT Oncology, the leading contract research organization (CRO) specializing exclusively in the field of oncology. ACT…
That is what one new study finds. The Boston Globe reports that: Doctors may have oversold the benefits of mammography and underplayed its risks, which has left many women unable to make an informed decision about whether or not to have regular breast cancer screenings beginning at age 40. That troubling finding is based on…
Oftentimes, health services research measure access as the distance between a patient and the nearest provider of a given type (e.g., hospital, physician). This issue of access is particularly relevant for individuals with cancer, since cancer care typically requires supervisions from specialist oncologists. In most cases, health services researchers assume that individuals located far from…