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Register today for the 2016 Spring Forum being held April 21-22, 2016 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando. Click here to visit the conference website.
Newsweek
As much as we hate to admit, a person’s physical appearance bears some influence on the kinds of opportunities that will present in their life. Many experts have suggested height and weight are two of the strongest indicators of education and income level, and even whether a person finds a suitable mate.
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NPR
Oncologist Theodora Ross discusses the hereditary nature of cancer and her own predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer, which led her to have a double mastectomy and to have her ovaries removed.
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The New York Times
At a time when genetic testing and genetically personalized treatments for cancer are proliferating, buoyed by new resources like President Barack Obama’s $215 million personalized medicine initiative, women with breast cancer are facing a frustrating reality: The genetic data is there, but in many cases, doctors do not know what to do with it. That was the situation Angie Watts, 44, faced after she walked into a radiation oncologist’s office last June expecting to discuss the radiation therapy she was about to begin after a lumpectomy for breast cancer.
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| | BIOTECH/DIAGNOSTICS/PERSONALIZED MEDICINE |
The Atlantic
Personalized medicine — the idea that genetic testing can reveal a person’s unique risks for various illnesses, as well as the most effective treatments — has attracted a huge amount of attention over the past few years. While the concept includes promising approaches to things like cancer treatment, much of the focus has been on using genetic risk information to motivate healthy lifestyles.
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Health Information Designs
With the pharmaceutical industry shifting focus away from manufacturing its traditional, well-known and widely used drugs — many of which will lose exclusivity over approximately the next five years — how will the turn toward orphan drugs affect overall pharmacy expenditures? Understanding the nature of orphan drugs and the reasons for their increasing prominence can help point to an answer.
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News-Medical.net
Understanding the complexity of cancer is a major goal of the scientific community, and for kidney cancer researchers this goal just got closer. Dr. Chad Creighton, associate professor of medicine and member of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center Division of Biostatistics at Baylor College of Medicine, led the study that analyzed close to 900 kidney cancers at the molecular level.
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HealthDay News via U.S. News & World Report
Scientists say they have created embryonic stem cells with just one copy of human DNA instead of the normal two, and they believe their achievement might help further genetic and medical research.
These stem cells are the first human cells capable of dividing and replicating with just one copy of DNA, according to the paper published March 16 in the journal Nature.
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Popular Science
Of the 4,000 Americans waiting for heart transplants, only 2,500 will receive new hearts in the next year. Even for those lucky enough to get a transplant, the biggest risk is the their bodies will reject the new heart and launch a massive immune reaction against the foreign cells.
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| | ACCOUNTABLE CARE ORGANIZATIONS |
Healthcare Finance News
While accountable care organizations piloted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services are expanding due to the government's focus on alternative payment models, ACOs run by private insurers are growing as health systems weigh the benefits of joining.
For starters, getting doctors onboard a value-based model when most of their payments are still in fee-for-service remains a challenge.
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Becker's Hospital Review
While more than half of accountable care organization provider networks include hospitals, whether or not an ACO includes hospitals does not appear to affect its ability to manage hospital-related aspects of patient care, according to a study from The Commonwealth Fund.
Researchers analyzed data from 269 ACOs that responded to the National Survey of Accountable Care Organizations between October 2012 and March 2014, as well as information from Leavitt Partners' ACO database.
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| | FDA: NEW TREATMENTS AND TECHNOLOGY |
The Associated Press via U.S. News & World Report
A disappearing medical implant will get a closer look from the Food and Drug Administration this week.
The FDA meets on Tuesday to review Abbott Laboratories' first-of-a-kind heart stent that dissolves into the body after helping to clear fat-clogged arteries. Abbott has asked the agency to approve its Absorb stent as an alternative to permanent, metal implants that have long been used to treat narrowing arteries that can lead to heart attack and death.
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The Associated Press via Fox News
The Food and Drug Administration expanded approval of a Pfizer drug to treat a small subset of lung cancer patients with a rare mutation.
The agency said that Xalkori capsules are now approved for patients with the ROS-1 gene mutation, who make up about 1 percent of U.S. patients with non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of the disease.
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The Washington Post
The failures of a dozen nonprofit health insurance plans created by the Affordable Care Act could cost the government up to $1.2 billion, according to a harsh new congressional report that concludes federal officials ignored early warnings about the plans’ fragility and moved in too late as problems arose.
The report, released by a Senate investigations panel, says that the bulk of those loans are unlikely to be recovered, with some plans unable to pay “a substantial amount of money” they still owe doctors and hospitals for members’ care.
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Health Payer Intelligence
In today’s world, the average employee and business owner are seeing a rise in health insurance costs. Even through the health insurance exchange, premium prices are expected to rise this year while high-deductible plans are becoming more standard products offered by health payers. What is a business owner or an employee left to do in the midst of increasing health insurance costs?
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Check out JMCM’s new website at www.jmcmpub.org
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| Seattle Genetics Announces FDA Regular Approval of ADCETRIS® for Classical Hodgkin Lymphoma Patients at High Risk of Relapse or Progression. Click here to view more information. |
| Sandoz, a Novartis company, announced today that Zarxio(TM) (filgrastim-sndz) is now available in the United States. Zarxio is the first biosimilar approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the first to launch in the US. Please click here for more information.
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