saved the health system money<\/a> \u2014 \u201ca home run,\u201d said Dr. Scott Ramsey, a cancer researcher and health economist at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Washington State.<\/p>\nThat combination of benefits is rare among cancer therapies: The new pancreatic cancer drug daraxonrasib, for example, costs $480,000 annually, has unpleasant side effects and, while it prolongs life by several months, does not increase overall long-term survival.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we had a drug with this magnitude of benefit, it would immediately become standard of care and funded\u201d by insurance companies, said Dr. Christopher Booth, an oncologist and professor at Queen\u2019s University in Kingston, Ontario, and the leader of the exercise trial.<\/p>\n
While guidelines now recommend that oncologists help colon cancer patients achieve at least 150 minutes of moderate to rigorous exercise per week, many patients need support in the form of a structured program, with a trainer and supervised sessions, to get to that level and stick with it. But there\u2019s not yet an insurance pathway to pay for such programs \u2014 a major barrier to rolling them out more widely.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can tell patients that if you do this, you may survive longer,\u201d Dr. Ramsey said. But unfortunately, he added, \u201cwe just don\u2019t have the infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Current programs are largely limited to major cancer centers and dependent on philanthropy or individual out-of-pocket payments to cover costs, leaving poorer patients and those who live far from these centers without access.<\/p>\n
Dr. Jeff Meyerhardt, a gastrointestinal oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, refers his patients to the hospital\u2019s center for alternative therapies, where they can consult with a trainer and access in-person and online exercise classes. But the trainer can\u2019t continue supporting patients over time.<\/p>\n
At the University of California, San Francisco, doctors refer eligible patients for physical therapy and rehabilitation, which can be reimbursed by insurance, while many Y.M.C.A. branches offer a free or low-cost 12-week program for cancer survivors.<\/p>\n
Improving outcomes among cancer patients isn\u2019t as simple as telling them to exercise more, said Kathryn Schmitz, an exercise oncology researcher at U.P.M.C. Hillman Cancer Center. \u201cExercise is not just biology,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is also behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Schmitz is the founding director of Moving Through Cancer, the program in which Mr. Colker is participating. It is tailored to each patient: Some need more support, while others \u201care well enough to go out and play some pickleball,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kimberly Barker, 68, suffered from low back and hip pain and fatigue after treatment for bladder and uterine cancer. A quilter who used to bicycle with her husband on trails near their home in Butler County, Pa., Ms. Barker lost the motivation to do the things she loved.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just so tired, no energy, no stamina,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She met with Ms. Masten, the trainer, once a week for 12 weeks, and also did the suggested exercises between meetings. She continued doing them after the program ended, and now feels back to her normal self. She and her husband have resumed their bike rides.<\/p>\n
Because of the success in people like Ms. Barker, U.P.M.C. has decided to offer the program through its employee health plan for breast cancer patients beginning next year.<\/p>\n
The health system will be the first in the country to offer insurance coverage for exercise oncology, Dr. Schmitz said. She and her colleagues argued for it based on randomized trials that showed it saved costs<\/a> by reducing hospitalizations, emergency room trips and unplanned office visits.<\/p>\n\u201cThis U.P.M.C. rollout is a giant experiment,\u201d Dr. Schmitz said. If it\u2019s successful, the hospital plans to expand it to all cancers in 2028. Dr. Schmitz also pushed to incorporate exercise into standards that cancer hospitals must follow to receive certain accreditation, which will happen later this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is no longer just something that would be nice to have,\u201d Dr. Schmitz said. \u201cThis is a therapeutic intervention, it needs to be done \u2014 and it needs to be done for all patients.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lee Colker powered on an iPad in the basement of his Pittsburgh home and logged into a virtual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[687,47844,264214,674,97,122616,1728,21],"class_list":["post-874533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-cancer","tag-clinical-trials","tag-disease-rates","tag-exercise","tag-health","tag-health-insurance-and-managed-care","tag-research","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}