CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – June 26, 2014 – Foundation Medicine, Inc. (NASDAQ: FMI) today announced that it has partnered with Patient Advocate Foundation (PAF) on a national program to provide assistance to patients with cancer and their families seeking access to targeted therapies. The program, called FoundationOne? CareLine, offers personalized case management services to patients who are uninsured, underinsured or face other challenges that impact their access to care, and increases physicians’ ability to act on FoundationOne results.
Adoption of FoundationOne by academic and community-based oncologists supports the clinical utility required to improve health outcomes and quality of life for select groups of patients that can benefit from targeted treatment. However, it can sometimes be difficult for patients and their physicians to gain access to appropriate and potentially life-saving treatments.
“Rapid developments in genomics and the scientific understanding of cancer in recent years have fundamentally changed the way cancer can be treated, yet at times, the advances evidenced by new medical and scientific data have outpaced access to treatment,” said Deborah Morosini, MD, vice president of clinical development, Foundation Medicine. “Through this partnership with Patient Advocate Foundation, FoundationOne CareLine connects patients to case management resources that help them navigate the appropriate channels to secure treatments by leveraging peer-reviewed literature supporting their use.”
The FoundationOne CareLine is an expansion of a pilot effort between Foundation Medicine and PAF that supported patients from select large physician practices, and resulted in almost $400,000 in reimbursement for medical expenses secured for patients. Through the expanded program, clinical case managers will continue to provide comprehensive case management services to uninsured, underinsured and insured patients who are facing obstacles obtaining prescribed targeted therapies that are approved in an indication other than the patient’s tumor type. Additional services include assistance navigating the reimbursement system to help cover costs associated with the FoundationOne test and ancillary treatment related costs, clinical trials education and screening and assistance for patients seeking access to investigational therapies under compassionate use.
“Patient Advocate Foundation case managers improve the lives of patients and help ensure that prescribed medical care is within reach by providing the appropriate evidence to payers to secure access to treatment,” said Alan Balch, CEO of Patient Advocate Foundation. “Through this partnership, Foundation Medicine is supporting valuable case management services that will make a meaningful difference in the lives of cancer patients who are seeking access to targeted therapies that their doctors believe will have a significant impact in treating their disease.”
For more information on the FoundationOne CareLine, contact Foundation Medicine client services at (888) 988-3639.
About the Patient Advocate Foundation
Patient Advocate Foundation, established in 1996 with headquarters in Hampton, VA, and offices in California, Iowa, Florida and Texas, is a national non-profit organization that seeks to safeguard patients through effective mediation assuring access to care, maintenance of employment and preservation of their financial stability relative to their diagnosis of life threatening or debilitating diseases at no cost to patients. In 2013, PAF provided professional case management services to more than 88,000 patients with additional requests for information for professional services via web, online chats and outreach activities.
About FoundationOne®
FoundationOne, the company’s first clinical product, is a fully informative genomic profile for solid tumors used by oncologists to identify the molecular alterations in a patient’s tumor and match those alterations with relevant targeted therapies and clinical trials. Using next-generation sequencing in routine cancer specimens, FoundationOne interrogates all genes somatically altered in human cancers that are validated targets for therapy or unambiguous drivers of oncogenesis based on current knowledge. It reveals all classes of genomic alterations including base substitutions, insertions, deletions, copy number alterations and select rearrangements. FoundationOne fits easily into the clinical workflow of the ordering physician, and test results are provided in an easy-to-interpret report supported by a comprehensive review of published literature. FoundationOne is a laboratory-developed test performed at Foundation Medicine’s CLIA-certified lab. Please visit www.FoundationOne.com for more information.
About Foundation Medicine
Foundation Medicine (NASDAQ: FMI) is a molecular information company dedicated to a transformation in cancer care in which treatment is informed by a deep understanding of the genomic changes that contribute to each patient’s unique cancer. The company’s clinical assays, FoundationOne for solid tumors and FoundationOne Heme for hematologic malignancies, sarcomas and pediatric cancers, provide a fully informative genomic profile to identify the molecular alterations in a patient’s cancer and match them with relevant targeted therapies and clinical trials. Foundation Medicine’s molecular information platform aims to improve day-to-day care for patients by serving the needs of clinicians, academic researchers and drug developers to help advance the science of molecular medicine in cancer. For more information, please visit www.FoundationMedicine.com or follow Foundation Medicine on Twitter (@FoundationATCG).
Foundation Medicine® and FoundationOne® are registered trademarks of Foundation Medicine, Inc.
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