Committee Will Work with Stakeholders to Ensure Stable Patient Access to Cancer Drugs

WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES, October 25, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Community Oncology Alliance (COA) Board of Directors announced today the creation of the Drug Policy and Regulation Committee. The committee will seek to provide solutions to ensure patients and practices have stable and affordable access to existing and emerging cancer drugs. These solutions will seek to address rising costs, supply chain issues, outdated payment and reimbursement structures, and drug shortages, among others.

Over the past few decades, cancer drugs have improved dramatically, improving survival rates and treatment journeys for patients. However, the most recent decade has seen practices and patients weathering high costs for these drugs, supply chain breakages, limited adoption of biosimilars, and drug shortages like the ongoing one that affects generic, sterile injectable cancer drugs. The root of these problems is public policy that discourages the manufacturing of these drugs and/or imposes unfeasible procurement, dispensing, and reimbursement terms on the involved parties. The Drug Policy and Regulation Committee seeks to address these roots by working with all invested parties, including manufacturers and wholesalers, group purchasing organizations, federal and state policymakers and regulatory agencies, payers, providers, researchers, advocacy groups, and more.

“Over my career, I have seen cancer drugs improve by leaps and bounds. Those improvements don’t matter to patients if they cannot access them due to lack of supply, government policy that discourages manufacturing, or middlemen that try to dictate what drug a patient can use,” said Richard McDonough, MD, co-chair of the Drug Policy and Regulation Committee and a practicing oncologist at Florida Cancer Specialists and Research Institute.

“We want to encourage stakeholders at every level to fix this broken system,” said Kathy Oubre, MS, co-chair of the Drug Policy and Regulation Committee and CEO of Pontchartrain Cancer Center. “Whether that is championing the use of biosimilars to decrease costs and increase competition, creating redundancies for manufacturers in case of a crisis, or fixing the system of middlemen between manufacturers and practices, this committee will encourage decisionmakers to work toward a future where critical drugs are easily accessible by practices and patients.”

The Drug Policy and Regulation Committee is currently made up of seven COA members and one COA team member. They are:

• Kathy Oubre, MS, Pontchartrain Cancer Center, co-chair
• Richard McDonough, MD, Florida Cancer Specialists and Research Institute, co-chair
• Barbara McAneny, New Mexico Oncology Hematology Consultants, Ltd.
• Lucio Gordan, MD, Florida Cancer Specialists and Research Institute
• Glenn Balasky, Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers
• Aaron Lyss, OneOncology
• Kyle Kitchen, PharmD, Utah Cancer Specialists
• Mark Thompson, MD, Community Oncology Alliance

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About the Community Oncology Alliance: The Community Oncology Alliance (COA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advocating for community oncology practices and, most importantly, the patients they serve. For more than 20 years, COA has been the only organization dedicated solely to community oncology where the majority of Americans with cancer are treated. The mission of COA is to ensure that patients with cancer receive quality, affordable, and accessible cancer care in their own communities. More than 5,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with cancer every day and, deaths from the disease have been steadily declining due to earlier detection, diagnosis, and treatment. Learn more at www.CommunityOncology.org. Follow COA on Twitter at www.twitter.com/oncologyCOA or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CommunityOncologyAlliance.

Drew Lovejoy
Community Oncology Alliance
info@coacancer.org

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