The National Comprehensive Cancer Network launched its value tool, NCCN Evidence Blocks, which will be presented at its annual conference, March 31 to April 2.
NCCN has published two additional resources since its 2015 meeting: the NCCN Framework and the NCCN Quick Guide Series for patients.
NCCN Guidelines with NCCN Evidence Blocks
Originally presented at the NCCN’s 10th Annual Congress: Hematologic Malignancies in October 2015, the Evidence Blocks represent five measures of specific recommendations found in the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines:
- Efficacy of Regimen/Agent
- Safety of Regimen/Agent
- Quality of Evidence
- Consistency of Evidence
- Affordability of Regimen/Agent
The goal is to provide health care providers and patients the information to make choices when selecting systemic therapies based upon measures related to treatment, supporting data and cost.
These measures may be used to understand the clinical and scientific rationale for specific recommendations and estimates of the economic impact of the recommendations. These measures may also be used to educate providers and patients, and to be a starting point for shared decision-making considering the patient’s own value system.
To date, NCCN has published guidelines with evidence blocks for cancers of the breast, colon, kidney, non-small cell lung, prostate and rectum; as well as chronic myelogenous leukemia, melanoma, multiple myeloma, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas.
More information is available on the NCCN website.
NCCN Framework for Resource Stratification of NCCN Guidelines
Announced in March 2015, NCCN Framework guides evidence-based adaptation to available clinical treatment resources. The goal of the framework is to define appropriate treatment pathways at four resource levels—Basic, Limited, Enhanced, and NCCN Guidelines—and deliver a tool for health care providers to identify treatment options that will provide the best possible outcomes given specific resource constraints.
The four levels of NCCN Framework resources are defined as:
- Basic: Essential services needed to provide basic minimal standard of care
- Limited: Services from the Basic Level and additional services that provide major improvements in disease outcomes, e.g. survival, that are not cost prohibitive
- Enhanced: Services from the Limited Level and additional services that provide lesser improvements in disease outcomes and/or services that provide major improvements in disease outcomes but are cost prohibitive at lower resource levels
- NCCN Guidelines: The parent NCCN Guidelines are evidence-based, consensus-driven recommendations made by the NCCN Guidelines panels. They include services from the Enhanced Level and additional services that provide minor improvements in disease outcomes, interventions that are cost prohibitive at lower resource levels, and/or services that do not provide improvement in disease outcomes but are desirable services.
To date, versions of NCCN Framework are available for the following: breast, cervical, gastric, hepatobiliary, non-small cell lung, and prostate cancers.
NCCN Quick Guide Series
Launched in 2015, the NCCN Quick Guide sheets are educational tools for use by patients and their caregivers in conjunction with the NCCN Guidelines for Patients.
The NCCN Quick Guide Series summarizes key points and recommendations of the complete NCCN Guidelines for Patients and feature links to the appropriate information within the NCCN Guidelines for Patients.
The NCCN Quick Guides can be found on the NCCN website.
