AJMC View: Balancing Cancer Treatment Innovation and Economic Burden

At The American Journal of Managed Care’s Institute for Value-Based Medicine event that took place this past October, speakers discussed the high cost of new therapeutics. A balance must be struck, according to Kevin Cohen, MD, of Optum Care, using data analytics to optimize care quality and costs.

According to Laura Joszt, MA, “Cohen’s chief takeaway: Not only is there no relationship between cost of care and quality of care, but ‘very often, they are inversely related.’ He shared a cost/quality scattergram of 1-year survival rates and total inpatient costs for Medicare beneficiaries with myocardial infarction, colon cancer, and hip fracture,1 which showed that when plotting cost and quality of physicians, only a few are practicing at what he called the ‘optimal intersection of both quality and efficiency.’ The goal of Optum Care’s OptimalCare Model is to drive health care to that ideal intersection.”

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(Source: AJMC, December 9^th, 2022)