Guest Post by Dr. Don Dizon: When Even the Best Advice Isn’t Good Enough
Every so often I see a patient who views cancer as a constant threat to be handled — it becomes so significant that it is as if she can never let her guard down. I always worry about this, partly because that singular focus on fighting cancer can sometimes detract ...
The Affordable Care Act & Cancer Survivorship (INFOGRAPHIC)
The first principle of the Imperatives for Quality Cancer Care states, "People with cancer have the right to a system of universal health care. This access should not be precluded because of preexisting conditions, genetic or other risk factors, or employment status." The Affordable Care Act has impacted these issues more than any ...
Guest Post by Peter Bach: Lung Cancer Awareness Month Brings a Long-Awaited Nod to Lung Cancer Screening
Guest post by Peter Bach, MD, MAPP, Director of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Center for Health Policy and Outcomes. Every November is lung cancer awareness month, but this November is on track to being a pretty special one. Lung cancer physicians and public health professionals breathed a collective sigh of relief ...
WCOE: The Burden of Caregiving, Financial Incentives, Unnecessary Services for Medicare Beneficiaries, and Medicaid Reform
What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) Each week, we take a closer look at the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. In “Seeing the ‘Invisible Patient,’”Jane Gross addresses the burden of caregiving and how often caregivers’ health, both physical and mental, is overlooked. Ms. Gross refers to an ...
WCOE: Medicare’s Draft Decision for Lung Cancer Screenings, Immunotherapy, Breast Cancer Screening
What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) Each week, we take a closer look at the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. Medicare’s draft decision to pay for lung cancer screenings for older, long-time smokers up to age 74 is likely to continue to spark some controversy. Several items ...
WCOE: Over-Diagnosis, Over-Treatment, and a Broader View of Health
What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) Each week, we take a closer look at the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. “We’re not finding enough of the really lethal cancers, and we’re finding too many of the slow-moving ones that probably don’t need to be found.” In a ...
Guest Post: Study Reports Nurse Navigators Make a Difference
As a cancer survivor and nurse educator, I am always interested in how we can advocate for the care of cancer patients and recommend policy changes. Recently, I had the occasion to experience the impact a nurse navigator can have in assisting patients. Patient navigation is a program designed to ...
WCOE: Dr. Susan Love Discusses the Pros and Cons of BRCA Screening
What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) Each week, we take a closer look at the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. There are as many questions as there are differences of opinion about what constitutes the best evidence when it comes to appropriate cancer screening and then appropriate ...
Balancing Patient Protections and Innovation: NCCS Applauds FDA Action to Regulate Laboratory-Developed Tests
The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) commends the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for taking critical steps to ensure that the promise of personalized cancer medicine is realized and that cancer patients can rest assured that they are receiving treatments consistent with their diagnoses. Today, FDA notified Congress that ...
Study Raises Questions & Choices for Women Screening for Breast Cancer
Several articles published on Tuesday, February 11, reported on a study in the British Medical Journal which finds death rates from breast cancer from all causes were the same in women who got mammograms and those who did not. The articles points out that the screening also had consequential effects when mammograms detected ...
