Managed Care Cast

Host Carol Skenes, chief of staff at Turquoise, previews Crystal Clear With Carol Skenes, a new podcast about making health care more transparent and easier to navigate. She explains why opaque payment processes leave patients without answers on cost. She also outlines what a simpler, waste-free transaction could look like and who is working toward it. Follow for season 1.

Patients Open to Lower-Cost Weight Maintenance to Expand GLP-1 Access by Managed Care Cast

In part 2 of this conversation recorded at Patient-Centered Oncology Care 2026 in Nashville, Melody Chang, vice president of pharmacy operations at American Oncology Network (AON), talks with 2 AON colleagues. Susan Sabo Wagner, vice president of clinical innovation, explains why financial toxicity should be managed as a clinical toxicity. She also covers how electronic patient-reported outcomes can support patients on CAR T-cell and bispecific therapies between visits, and how AON is rolling out behavioral health partnerships, distress screening, and area deprivation index data across its practices. Alti Rahman, chief strategy and innovation officer, describes how AON is now supplying quality measures to payers instead of receiving them, and previews a closing panel on building trust among payers, providers, and patients through 2030. Both share what stood out most at the meeting, from patient access to keeping pace with fast-moving therapies.

For years, first-relapse myeloma regimens have delivered just 1 to 2 years of progression-free survival and immunomodulatory drugs were dosed to the maximum tolerated dose. Iberdomide, the first CELMoD approved by the FDA and the first myeloma approval based on minimal residual disease negative status, changes this narrative. In this episode, we speak with Sagar Lonial, MD, FACP, FASCO, professor and chair of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine, chief medical officer at Winship Cancer Institute, and lead investigator of the phase 3 EXCALIBER trial. Lonial breaks down the new EXCALIBER data he presented at IMS 2026, including MRD negativity rates for the study and comparator arms; how dosing was chosen for optimal fit rather than force; and and why MRD as an end point has potential to get new therapeutics to patients faster.

On this episode, AJMC spoke with Jaspreet Loyal, MD, about vitamin K refusals, which many clinicians believe may be a downstream effect of broader vaccine hesitancy.