Aventine Consulting LLC

Oncology

Requests for economic assessments of oncology products are becoming more widespread as new treatments arise that often increase quality of life and/or life expectancy for cancer patients at additional cost.^1-3 It is estimated that cancer costs account for 5% of total US healthcare spending, and as public and private payers attempt to control the costs of cancer care by decreasing reimbursement, there has been an increase in practice referrals to hospitals for chemotherapy treatment.^4,5 Payers recognize that this shift back to hospital-based care will likely further increase costs and, as a result, creative collaborations between payers and clinicians are becoming more common.^4,6,7 It is clear that oncology products are now being evaluated stringently by payers, as has been true for products in other disease states for some time.

The pharmacists at Aventine have a great depth of experience in the development of dossiers, US-based economic models, and other medical communication materials for oncology products. In addition, we have past experience as clinicians managing patients in outpatient oncology infusion centers and home infusion services relating to oncology treatment support.

Recently, novel biotechnologies, tumor-agnostic checkpoint inhibitors, CAR-T cell therapy, companion diagnostic tests, and biosimilars have garnered attention in the oncology marketplace. Aventine has had the opportunity to work with these types of products to highlight their unique reimbursement needs and budget ramifications through dossier development and modeling. Beyond the goal of achieving formulary acceptance, our focus has also been to maximize payer education for these novel technologies.