In July 2021, the Biden-Harris administration, through the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and Treasury and the Office of Personnel Management, issued the Requirements Related to Surprise Billing interim final rule to restrict surprise billing. The rule applies to billing for patients in job-based and individual health plans who obtain emergency care, nonemergency care from out-of-network providers at in-network facilities, and air ambulance services from out-of-network providers.

Get to know Valerie Burger, RN, MA, MS, OCN^®, CPN, treasurer for the ONS Board of Directors from 2021–2023 and director-at-large from 2021–2024. Burger is an assistant vice president of cancer services from Bellmore, NY.

Hypercalcemia of malignancy (HCM) is a common paraneoplastic syndrome associated with poor prognosis that affects approximately 20%–30% of patients with cancer. It’s most often seen in patients with breast, lung, renal, or ovarian cancers; squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck; multiple myeloma; and certain lymphomas.

Nurses and other healthcare providers at the point of care use evidence-based practice techniques to ask and answer clinically relevant questions to promote quality, safety, and improved patient outcomes. Evidence-based practice is the process of shared decision-making that incorporates the best available evidence, clinical expertise, and patient preferences and values.

More than 40% of patients with melanoma treated with nivolumab or pembrolizumab experience persistent long-term immune-related adverse events (irAEs) for at least 1.5 years, researchers reported in JAMA Oncology.

Research has identified an association between malnutrition and functional deficits in patients with cancer, regardless of age, and other studies confirm that malnutrition affects treatment tolerability, outcomes, and quality of life for patients with cancer. However, studies have also found that oncology clinicians do not consistently assess for malnutrition and functional deficits in clinical settings. 

Cardiac toxicities are associated with many types of cancer therapies, with both length of and time since treatment increasing a patient’s risk for the adverse event. Anthracycline chemotherapies are among the oldest agents still used for a variety of cancer diagnoses, and as cancer survivorship continues to grow, more patients are presenting with late-onset cardiac complications.

On July 9, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved daratumumab and hyaluronidase-fihj (Darzalex Faspro^®) in combination with pomalidomide and dexamethasone for adult patients with multiple myeloma who have received at least one prior line of therapy, including lenalidomide and a proteasome inhibitor.

May annually marks a celebration of oncology nurses, and during its May 25, 2021, meeting, the ONS Board of Directors did just that: it welcomed and celebrated new members Valerie Burger, RN, MA, MS, OCN®, CPN, Danya Garner, MSN, RN, OCN®, CCRN-K, NPD-BC, and Patricia Geddie, PhD, APRN, AOCNS®, FCNS, and conducted an ice breaker to learn more about each other. Highlights from the decisions, updates, and other Board actions from that meeting follow.

On July 9, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved enfortumab vedotin-ejfv ([EV], Padcev®), a Nectin-4–directed antibody and microtubule inhibitor conjugate, for adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer who previously received a programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1) or programmed death-ligand (PD-L1) inhibitor and platinum-containing chemotherapy or are ineligible for cisplatin-containing chemotherapy and have previously received one or more prior lines of therapy.