Reimbursement

A look at last week's top stories in the world of pharmacy.

Pharmacy benefit manager reports specialty drugs drive 97% of spending for hereditary angioedema care.

Managed care organizations and pharmacy benefit managers are increasingly using strict approaches to manage drugs, including formulary exclusions.

A review found an elevated risk of cancer progression with increasing wait time between positive screening and start of diagnostic testing.

Last year, 41% of pharmacy drug spending was for specialty drugs compared with 59% for traditional drugs.

Nivolumab showed major tumor responses in early stage lung cancer patients and an increase in anti-tumor T-cells that remained after the tumor was removed.

Top news of the day from across the health care landscape.

New treatments for cystic fibrosis, migraines, and multiple sclerosis expected to help push specialty drug costs on the pharmacy benefit to nearly 50% of total drug spending by 2020.

Annual meeting explores how to overcome the challenges with patient care that community oncology practices face on a daily basis.

If pharmacies can avoid the problems implicated in the whistleblower case, then the risk of finding themselves in the government’s crosshairs will be substantially reduced.

CMS tweaked an opioid policy aimed at Medicare Part D patients that drew criticism when it was first released in draft form.

Services such as Uber and Lyft that help get patients to their medical appointments could also bring patients to their pharmacies.

Top news of the day from across the health care landscape.

Alcohol-dependent patients with hepatitis C virus comorbidity found to have greater deficits in the frontal, precentral, superior, and orbital volumes.

Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program established through the Affordable Care Act found to penalize facilities that serve a large number of minority patients.

Christopher W. Kennedy, MSM, Chief Operating Officer, Heritage Biologics, discusses how specialty pharmacies can implement value-based reimbursement.

Besides tracking the Healthy Days metric, Humana has focused interventions around social determinants of health: food insecurity, loneliness, and social isolation.

Condition-specific readmissions measures for heart failure, pneumonia, and heart attack may not accurately or fairly reflect hospital quality.

Chronic infection with hepatitis C virus is the leading cause of hepatocellular carcinoma.

Fuel source of cancer cells could impact their efficacy of CAR-T cell therapies for pediatric patients.

Combining Tecentriq with Avastin shows promise extending survival in patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

Joy Gilbert, Vice President, Operations, US Bioservices, a part of AmerisourceBergen, talks about the potential merits of outcomes-based contracting for drugs that treat rare diseases.

Top news of the day from across the health care landscape.

Julianne Orr, PharmD, from the Indiana University Health Simon Cancer Center, talks about the pharmacist's role in ensuring patients are adherent to their oral chemotherapy regimens.

First Abbreviated New Drug Application filed for sofosbuvir (Sovaldi).