Benjamin W. Corn, MD, of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, discusses hope: what it takes for hope to thrive; how he and his colleagues are helping patients and providers become more hopeful through workshops; and his collaboration with the Southwest Oncology Group to aid patients, through hopefulness, to better adhere to treatment regimens.
Manali I. Patel, MD, MPH, of Stanford University School of Medicine, discusses data suggesting that community health workers and innovative payer models can better engage low-income and minority patients with cancer, improve their health-related quality of life, and reduce unwanted and unnecessary acute care.
Jenny Jing Xiang, MD, of Yale University School of Medicine, discusses a universal, standardized clinical trial prescreening protocol, which streamlined research recruitment and was associated with yearly increases in patient enrollment at the Veterans Administration (VA) Connecticut Cancer Center. The Center became the top-accruing VA site for National Cancer Institute–sponsored trials and was ranked in the top 10 enrolling sites nationally for VA and non-VA hospitals.
Leticia Nogueira, PhD, MPH, of the American Cancer Society, discusses results from a study designed to evaluate the impact of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In Medicaid-expansion states, mortality among patients after lung cancer surgery decreased from 2.4% before the ACA to 0.8% after the ACA, with no significant change in non–Medicaid-expansion states.
Sarah S. Mougalian, MD, of Yale Cancer Center, discusses the increasingly common problem of long wait times for access to oncology care. Her team developed a next-day access program in several of Yale’s oncology services, which was well received by patients and decreased the time to first visit.
Aakash Desai, MPH, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, talks about the urgent need for drug pricing reform, given the average expenditure of Medicare part D, and the ultimate out-of-pocket costs for patients with cancer. The promise of precision oncology will fail, says Dr. Desai, if we fail to bring the right drugs to the right patient at the right time, with the right price.
