The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the U.S. agency in charge of Medicare, announced yesterday that it has scheduled a meeting to discuss the coverage of Dendreon’s prostate cancer vaccine Provenge. The meeting has been scheduled for this November 17. […]
A member of the advanced prostate cancer on-line support group who is the wife of an advanced prostate cancer survivor in New Mexico just informed us that Trailblazer (the MAC that controls New Mexico reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid) has said they will not pay for her husband to get Provenge. They were also told [...]
There has been a lot of questions raised about why the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) has out of the clear blue, launched a review of Provenge, a review that could ultimately make Provenge unavailable to men on Medicare and Medicaid (see the post:Medicare Funding for Provenge, We Urgently Need Your HELP). There [...]
Mike Scott who writes the THE “NEW” PROSTATE CANCER INFOLINK today published an excellent summary/discussion about survival time for men with metastatic prostate cancer. He presents a synopsis about anticipated survival going back to the late 1980s and brings the conversation up to our current condition. He reminds us that our next big step will [...]
How are funding decisions made for Medicare and Medicaid? What drugs are to be funded? These questions have recently come to our attention as many of us have attempted to have Medicare fund our use of Provenge. The administration of Medicare is actually broken into 15 different regions, or MACs (Medicare Administrative Contractors). Each MAC [...]
We have talked about it many times in past posts, the potential that many believe combination therapy can hold for better treatments for all cancers, including advanced prostate cancer. Combination therapy has made AIDS treatment as successful as it has become and it holds a similar promise for cancer treatment. An example of this potential [...]
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), a private organization which develops what has become the standard of care guidelines for clinical practice in oncology, has modified their guidelines to included sipuleucel-T (Provenge) as a part of its prostate cancer management guidelines. The guidelines specify Provenge as a category 1 treatment which is appropriate as salvage [...]
I have heard back that a number of people have contacted the call center at Dendreon (877-336-3736) and been told to call back at a later date for specific information about getting treatment. I have spoken with Dendreon and they have explained that they are working with the various infusion centers on mapping out specific [...]
Provenge has finally received the long awaited approval from the FDA!!! We all celebrate and look forward to benefiting from its potential to extend our life. Provenge is the first immunologic therapy ever approved in the United States to treat cancer. (In Russia, Antigenics has received approval for an immunological treatment for kidney cancer). The [...]
ABC News has posted a brief story about Provenge. Most of us hope that sometime this week the FDA will finally approve Provenge. To see the brief video interview about Provenge click here. Joel T Nowak, MA, MSW
