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Jaime Rosenberg, welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Clinical trials have become increasing costly ventures, adding to the overall cost of developing a drug and, ultimately, the price that patients pay for drugs. A 2016 estimate by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, for example, pegged average clinical trial costs across all three phases of development at roughly $340 million in out-of-pocket expenses. Big pharmas and small biotechs alike are looking for innovative ways to improve trial outcomes and, in turn, lower trial costs — this means increasing the efficiency in which they recruit patients, monitoring more closely how drugs are supplied and being more flexible about trial design. Here’s a look at some of the tools that are optimizing clinical trials today:

• Patient centricity
• Tapping into technology
• Data you can wear
• Flexibility
• Automated site supplies

Kelly Walsh, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

Nicole Grassano, PTNN, Pharmacy Week in Review, this weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.

A new study from Sweden is suggesting that many older adults with cancer are being prescribed preventive medications at the end of their lives that may harm their quality of life while providing questionable clinical benefits. The problem may stem from inadequate deprescribing...The study...online in Cancer, found that deprescribing strategies need to be more widely adopted to help reduce the burden of drugs that have limited clinical benefit near the end of life...The goal of palliative care is to reduce symptoms and maximize the quality of life, but sometimes what is used as palliative treatment decreases quality of life and that’s troubling...READ MORE

Laura Joszt, assistant managing editor at The American Journal of Managed Care. Welcome to This Week in Managed Care from the Managed Markets News Network

CGH Medical Center pharmacists say the system’s Med Card gives patients a better way to keep track of their medications – and say using the software has helped increase clinical knowledge...At CGH Medical Center in Sterling, Illinois, preventable readmissions represent a huge financial and clinical uncertainty...

• THE PROBLEM
• PROPOSAL
• MARKETPLACE
• MEETING THE CHALLENGE
• RESULTS

Pharmacists counseled more than 650 patients in the first eight months of the program at the 97-bed facility. They identified medication interventions in nearly half of all discharges. Depending on the intervention made, these changes had a major impact on patient safety and the cost of their medications...“While we haven’t been able to measure it yet, we are looking into how this program will impact our overall readmission rates and penalties, as well as HCAHPS scores,” said Tim Dunphy, director of pharmacy at CGH Medical Center...READ MORE

According to the Harvard Business Review, several big-name hospitals reported significant declines and, in some cases, net losses to their FY 2016 operating margins...How did some of the biggest brands in care delivery lose this much money? The problem isn’t declining revenue...Part Of The Problem Is Rooted In The Past...From the late 19th century to the early 20th, hospitals were places the sick went to die. For practically everyone else, healthcare was delivered by house call. With the introduction of general anesthesia and the discovery of powerful antibiotics, medical care began moving from people’s homes to inpatient facilities. And by the 1950s, some 6,000 hospitals had sprouted throughout the country...By the time Medicare rolled out in 1965, healthcare consumed just 5% of the Gross Domestic Product. Today, that number is 18%...Hospitals have contributed to the cost hike in recent decades by: (1) purchasing redundant, expensive medical equipment and generating excess demand, (2) hiring highly paid specialists to perform ever-more complex procedures with diminishing value, rather than right-sizing their work forces, and (3) tolerating massive inefficiencies in care delivery...Most hospital leaders acknowledge the need to course correct, but very few have been able to deliver care that’s significantly more efficient or cost-effective than before. Instead, hospitals in most communities have focused on reducing and eliminating competition. As a result, a recent study found that 90% of large U.S. cities were “highly concentrated for hospitals,” allowing those that remain to increase their market power and prices...

Nicole Crisano, PTNN. This weekly video program provides our readers with an in-depth review of the latest news, product approvals, FDA rulings and more.