Laura E. Panattoni, PhD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discusses results from a regional study on emergency department costs during cancer treatment and the need to focus on managing symptoms (Abstract 2).
Thomas J. Smith, MD, of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, summarizes two papers for which he was a discussant: reducing overuse of colony-stimulating factors without compromising the safety of patients with lung cancer receiving chemotherapy, and a cost-and-survival analysis before and after implementing Dana-Farber Clinical Pathways for patients with stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (Abstracts 3, 52).
Greg D. Judy, MD, of UNC Health Care, discusses the contributing factors, and possible fixes, for near-miss and actual safety incidents in patients being treated with radiotherapy.
Nicole Mittmann, PhD, of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, discusses her study findings on transitioning breast cancer survivors to primary care and the savings in resources and dollars that accrued as a result (Abstract 1).
Robert S. Miller, MD, of ASCO, updates the progress of CancerLinQ and its data set, now being used by oncologists to track quality measurement and reporting.
Caleb Dulaney, MD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, discusses ways to broaden and improve the quality of information that women with breast cancer find—in English and Spanish—on websites of nationally recognized cancer centers (Abstract 135).
