December 11 | December 12

12:00-5:30 pm / Registration

1:00-1:15 pm / Welcome and Introduction

1:15-1:45 pm / Cancer in the U.S. Today

What challenges and opportunities face the cancer community? This session will describe key trends in cancer epidemiology and how changes in cancer prevention, screening, treatment and survival rates are affecting Americans at both the aggregate and individual levels. The session will examine delivery and coverage of cancer care in the context of rising cost pressures, calls for stronger evidence, and concerns about disparities in access and quality.

1:45-2:45 pm / Notes from the Front Lines

How are patients and providers handling the pressure? Patients are struggling to pay their share of cancer care costs in a slowing economy, while pervasive cultural and socioeconomic disparities persist that threaten access to care. Payers and policymakers are asking providers to report more data to support quality measurement and pay-for-performance programs. Investments in health information technology are critical to support these efforts to improve the value of cancer care. This session will frame the challenges – financial, clinical, and ethical – that patients and providers face today.

2:45-3:00 pm / Refreshment Break

3:00-4:15 pm / New Delivery Strategies

How is care delivery evolving as cancer shifts from an acute disease to one requiring chronic management?  Both private payers and providers are rethinking a range of operational issues as they attempt to realign incentives and reimbursement, adopt new information technologies and tools, and experiment with care coordination models.  This session will describe innovative approaches that can boost the use of prevention, screening and monitoring services, facilitate sharing of health information, and help coordinate care more effectively for cancer survivors.

4:15-5:30 pm / Raising the Bar for 'Safe and Effective'

What new cancer treatments are in the pipeline? The FDA’s evolving assessment of the tradeoff between risks and benefits has affected the review, approval and post-market surveillance process for products across all therapeutic areas. This session will discuss the impact of changes in cancer specifically, including how research and development plans adapt to meet patient demands, how FDA assesses new cancer treatments, and the impact of post-market surveillance requirements on access to novel therapies.

5:30-6:30 pm / Networking Reception

6:30-8:30 pm / Dinner and Keynote Address
"This session is closed to the media.

Elizabeth Edwards has spent her lifetime committed to improving healthcare, eradicating poverty, and helping children thrive. Through her personal and public battle against cancer, she has helped launch important policy discussions on access to care and disparity in healthcare quality.

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December 11 | December 12

7:30 am-4:00 pm / Registration

8:00-8:30 am / Networking Breakfast

8:30-9:45 am / The Changing Threshold of 'Reasonable and Necessary'

Are cancer treatments and services still different?  Medicare’s use of utilization management for cancer therapies has been limited for both legal and practical reasons.  Likewise, coverage and payment for off-label uses listed in compendia and in medical literature has been a critical tool in the battle against cancer.  However, the level of scrutiny is rising as CMS becomes a more prudent purchaser.  This session will discuss how CMS’ coverage with evidence development and compendia policies may affect future innovation in the access to cancer care.

9:45-10:15 am / Medicare Part D and Cost Sharing for Cancer Drugs: Looking Back and Moving Ahead

How has the cost to Medicare beneficiaries of treating their cancer changed over time? Cost sharing has emerged as a critical issue for Medicare beneficiaries with cancer.  Medicare Part D plans have raised cost sharing and placed cancer drugs on higher cost-sharing tiers as plans’ formulary designs have evolved to include more tiers.  This session will present Avalere’s analysis of cost-sharing trends for cancer drugs from 2006 to 2009.

10:15-10:30 am / Refreshment Break

10:30-11:45 am / Translating Research into Policy and Practice

How do patients, providers and payers respond to new research findings?  Over the past several years, the FDA and payers have increasingly scrutinized new evidence for cancer treatments, such as erythropoesis-stimulating agents (ESAs), Herceptin®, and proton beam radiation therapy.  This session will discuss how and when payers incorporate new evidence into their policies, and how comparative effectiveness research may affect the day-to-day practice of cancer care.

12:00-1:15 pm / Networking Lunch

1:15-2:30 pm / Responding to the Demand for Accountability

What measures will best assess the effectiveness of cancer care?  Caught in a game of tug-of-war, providers seeking appropriate payment while payers demand more accountability.  At the same time, patients and their advocates are pushing for greater measurement and incentives for the delivery of prevention and screening services. This session will describe the current state of quality measurement and P4P within oncology, highlight innovative measurement approaches from the private sector, and describe how the healthcare system will have to balance the roles of physician judgment, standards and accountability.

2:30-2:45 pm / Refreshment Break

2:45-4:00 pm / Forecasting the Future of Personalized Medicine in Cancer Care

What will tomorrow bring? The promise of personalized medicine requires translating complex genetic information into knowledge and applying it, along with other treatment and diagnostic advances, to treatment of individual patients. These advances are poised to alter the options of cancer care options in the future, but must balance the financial pressures that will continue to influence coverage and access. This session will explore developments in basic science and technological research through three case studies, which seek to shape the base of evidence in cancer care and inform new treatment choices for physicians and patients: genetic testing, the caBIG project, and molecular imaging.

4:00-4:30 pm / Concluding Remarks / A Look to the Future

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