David Calabrese of OptumRx Talks Top Three Drugs in Pipeline, Industry Trends in Q2

Financial toxicity can affect patient outcomes and quality of life. For example, a patient may forgo treatment or medications to save money, or they may incur high medical debt or go into bankruptcy to pay for medical care.

In this month’s episode of Tuning In to the C-Suite, Briana Contreras, an editor of Managed Healthcare Executive, got to chatting with Sanjula Jain, Ph.D., chief research officer at Trilliant Health.

The first CAR-T cell therapy was developed and approved by the FDA in 2017 to treat relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Since then, six additional CAR-T cell therapies have been introduced to the market. Four of the seven are approved for B-cell lymphomas.

In this month’s episode of the "What's On Your Mind podcast," Peter Wehrwein, managing editor of MHE connects with the now Chief Clinical Officer of OptumRx Integrated Pharmacies, David Calabrese. In this conversation, David touches on his transition in January as OptumRx’s former chief pharmacy officer and market president of health plans and PBMs to his new role as Chief Clinical Officer where he now focuses more on things such as specialty pharmacy to home delivery — with an overall goal of creating whole-patient care. Throughout the conversation, Calabrese also touched on the market’s hot topic of insulin prices and behavioral health services within the OptumRx community, among other topics.

Oncologists should ask in advance about what young patients and their parents want to be told about changing prognoses, a new qualitative study finds

In a statistical analysis, Brukinsa resulted in fewer cases of disease progression or death and resulted in lower overall healthcare costs than Imbruvica in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.