Defining Value in Cancer Care: AVBCC 2013 Steering Committee Report.

The AVBCC Annual Meeting experiences exponential growth in attendance and participation as oncologists, payers, employers, managed care executives, patient advocates, and drug manufacturers convened in Hollywood, FL, on May 2-5, 2013, for the Third Annual Conference of the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care (AVBCC). The conference presented an all-inclusive open forum for stakeholder dialogue and integration across the cancer care continuum, facilitating an open dialogue among the various healthcare stakeholders to align their perspectives around the urgent need to address value in cancer care, costs, patient education, safety, outcomes, and quality. The AVBCC 2013 Steering Committee was held on the first day of the conference to define value in cancer care.

The association of consumer expectations, experiences and satisfaction with newly prescribed medications.

Objective: To examine the association between medication expectations and subsequent experience on treatment satisfaction and intention to continue using the medication.

Methods: A longitudinal study with two surveys administered to each patient. Patients prescribed a new medication were recruited in pharmacies within Michigan.

Patient-reported underuse of prescription medications: a comparison of nine surveys.

Nine national surveys documenting patient underuse of prescription medications were examined to describe the variation and trends in that underuse and identify possible reasons for the substantially different rates that were reported. Underuse includes unfilled prescriptions, delayed therapy, reduced frequency, and lowered dosage. Rates of cost-related patient underuse in the studies ranged from 1.

Importation of prescription medications: experiences, opinions, and intended behaviors of U.S. community pharmacists.

Objective: To describe community pharmacists' experiences with consumer demand for imported pharmaceuticals and their opinions about economic, policy, and patient care issues surrounding importation of medications and their willingness to procure these products from international sources, if legally permitted.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: Four states in the United States (Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, and Florida).