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Clinical, practice, and policy trends: a round-up and review of the 2016 oncology landscape
We end this year with yet another encouraging list from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of new drugs or expanded uses for some previously approved drugs for patients with life-threatening cancers. As clinicians focused on delivering quality, cost-effective care to our patients, that is exciting, but the overarching issues of dosing specificity, increasingly specific gene mutation testing, and complex therapy sequencing requirements explain another major trend of 2016: the increasing adoption of standardized pathways. In addition, given the continued explosion in drug pricing and the expanding use of high-cost drugs in more common diseases and in more lines of therapy, payers and providers are working to incorporate expanded decision support tools such as pathways to guide and optimally monitor therapies for patients.
Click on the PDF icon below to read the full article.
We end this year with yet another encouraging list from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of new drugs or expanded uses for some previously approved drugs for patients with life-threatening cancers. As clinicians focused on delivering quality, cost-effective care to our patients, that is exciting, but the overarching issues of dosing specificity, increasingly specific gene mutation testing, and complex therapy sequencing requirements explain another major trend of 2016: the increasing adoption of standardized pathways. In addition, given the continued explosion in drug pricing and the expanding use of high-cost drugs in more common diseases and in more lines of therapy, payers and providers are working to incorporate expanded decision support tools such as pathways to guide and optimally monitor therapies for patients.
Click on the PDF icon below to read the full article.
We end this year with yet another encouraging list from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of new drugs or expanded uses for some previously approved drugs for patients with life-threatening cancers. As clinicians focused on delivering quality, cost-effective care to our patients, that is exciting, but the overarching issues of dosing specificity, increasingly specific gene mutation testing, and complex therapy sequencing requirements explain another major trend of 2016: the increasing adoption of standardized pathways. In addition, given the continued explosion in drug pricing and the expanding use of high-cost drugs in more common diseases and in more lines of therapy, payers and providers are working to incorporate expanded decision support tools such as pathways to guide and optimally monitor therapies for patients.
Click on the PDF icon below to read the full article.
Mindfulness: valuable medicine for patients and clinicians?
Mindfulness can be described as an attentive awareness of the reality of things in the present moment that can impart power when coupled with a clear comprehension of what is taking place, or put another way, as a calm awareness of body, mind, and spirit supporting analysis that can lead to wisdom. Although many of us promote this practice to our patients to help them more fully live their days whether few or many, it is worth considering how this consciousness could help us, practicing oncologists, through the challenging changes we currently face in our clinical practices and to more fully participate in the transitions to high-quality cancer care, as was recently outlined in a report by the Institute of Medicine.1
*Click on the link to the left for a PDF of the full article.
Mindfulness can be described as an attentive awareness of the reality of things in the present moment that can impart power when coupled with a clear comprehension of what is taking place, or put another way, as a calm awareness of body, mind, and spirit supporting analysis that can lead to wisdom. Although many of us promote this practice to our patients to help them more fully live their days whether few or many, it is worth considering how this consciousness could help us, practicing oncologists, through the challenging changes we currently face in our clinical practices and to more fully participate in the transitions to high-quality cancer care, as was recently outlined in a report by the Institute of Medicine.1
*Click on the link to the left for a PDF of the full article.
Mindfulness can be described as an attentive awareness of the reality of things in the present moment that can impart power when coupled with a clear comprehension of what is taking place, or put another way, as a calm awareness of body, mind, and spirit supporting analysis that can lead to wisdom. Although many of us promote this practice to our patients to help them more fully live their days whether few or many, it is worth considering how this consciousness could help us, practicing oncologists, through the challenging changes we currently face in our clinical practices and to more fully participate in the transitions to high-quality cancer care, as was recently outlined in a report by the Institute of Medicine.1
*Click on the link to the left for a PDF of the full article.