IBM's Watson Gains Commercial Acceptance in US
February 15th 2017Watson for Oncology, the IBM "cognitive" computer tool for helping with clinical decisions, is making its debut this month at Jupiter Medical Center in Florida as a regular member of the armamentarium for fighting cancer, as opposed to being a prospective product on trial.
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Soaring Drug Prices Bring New Challenges
February 11th 2017Not only are drug prices soaring with the arrival of many new therapies, but competition for the drug dispensing and drug infusion business is on the rise, Jeff Liticker, PharmD, of UT Southwestern Medical said in a recent talk about oncology drug issues sponsored by the Association of Community Cancer Centers.
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Pharmacy Benefit Manager Back-end Fees Rise $13 Billion in 3 Years
February 2nd 2017A new trend in the way pharmacy benefit managers are collecting fees from pharmacy providers is driving up drug costs, gouging point-of-sale pharmacy operations, and playing havoc with spending at CMS, according to reports from CMS and the Community Oncology Alliance.
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Who Is at the Controls of 340B?
January 29th 2017The 340B Drug Pricing Program, designed to provide support for out-patient drug purchases, severely lacks federal oversight, said BRG Healthcare, the business advisory group, in a report sponsored by the Alliance for Integrity and Reform of 340B (AIR340B).
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The Community Oncology Alliance got most of its 2016 Christmas list. CVS Caremark dropped its plan to cut physician-owned dispensaries out of Medicare Part D oral drug distribution, CMS eased off the gas pedal on the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, and the Medicare Part B Drug Payment Model has been discontinued for now.
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Solutions Start to Emerge for Cumbersome EHR Reporting
January 14th 2017Cota, a New York-based precision informatics company, has developed what it says will be a significant aid for oncology practices working to conform to the expectations of CMS’s Oncology Care Model, which is designed to encourage physicians to strive for better patient outcomes and lower costs.
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Coroner's Report: Part B Payment Model Is Dead
December 17th 2016CMS and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have confirmed the demise of the Medicare Part B Drug Payment Model "experiment" to cut margins paid to physicians on some of the most expensive drugs and introduce private sector thinking into drug purchasing and pricing systems.
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ABIM Will Offer 2-Year "Knowledge Check-in" Test for MOC
December 16th 2016After 2 years of reflecting on feedback from the medical community, the American Board of Internal Medicine has developed a new iteration of its Maintenance of Certification testing that it hopes will satisfy the needs of physicians.
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MSKCC Collaborates With Hackensack Meridian Health in Precision Medicine
December 15th 2016To great fanfare, Hackensack Meridian Health of New Jersey and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center announced a co-branding partnership that they say would lead to highly fruitful collaborative research and make hundreds of clinical trial opportunities available to their patients.
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IBM's Watson Achieves High Concordance in Tumor Board Test
December 10th 2016The artificial intelligence computer program Watson for Oncology (WFO) achieved a high degree of concordance with tumor board recommendations in a double-blinded validation study in Bengaluru, India, according to results presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).
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COA Declares Early Victory in CMS Part B Payment Battle
November 24th 2016The change of administrations in Washington, DC may undermine the future of a proposal to revise Medicare Part B drug compensation, a plan that has been widely criticized in the oncological community because of the potential reduction in profit margins it entails.
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New "GPS" Test Is Designed to Predict Drug Efficacy
November 22nd 2016A test that may be considered beyond next generation in the oncological disease testing market is getting a trial run from Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey with help from a growing patient database known as COTA.
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Big Data Triggers Revolution in Discovery
November 22nd 2016In the old days, not too long ago, doctors’ offices were full of paper records, which filled shelf after shelf. This cumbersome form of keeping track of patients was effective in its own way, but with the rise of modern medicine and the power of computing, there is a need to move beyond.
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Ponatinib (CML) Pricing Gets a Blast From Congress
October 21st 2016The latest company to suffer a public relations and stock price crisis based on its drug pricing strategy is Ariad Pharmaceuticals, which has been blasted by Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT) on Twitter and in a formal letter demanding justification for the price tag Ariad has attached to the chronic myelogenous leukemia drug ponatinib.
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Medical Devices Begin Learning How to Talk
October 15th 2016Edward P. Ambinder, MD, discusses advances on improving the interoperability of computer technology to facilitate the sharing and security of patient records for the purposes of furthering patient-centric, coordinated, and value-based care.
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CMS Final Rule on MACRA Reform Eases Pressure
October 15th 2016The Final Rule from CMS on the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) eases the pressure on small, rural practices to meet reporting and performance standards and explains more about the intentions behind the recently announced 2017 transition year.
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