From the October 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
DMBN: What advice would you offer for individuals looking to pursue a leadership role for ASTRO?
Zietman: Start early. We’re actually encouraging residents to get engaged. Working for your specialty really adds enough dimension to a medical career. You’ll never be bored if you diversify.
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DMBN: What do you believe to be the biggest challenges oncology will face in the future?
Zietman: Cost. We have proton beam facilities costing $200 million. New drugs that may be $100,000 for one-year supply that only adds a few months to life. We need a new code of ethics and value that help us prioritize. We have to and are establishing a code of best practices — one toward cost and the other toward evidence. It’s not always easy to find evidence-based [practices] around rarer diseases. It’s going to involve some loss of income. At some subconscious level, having a quarter million dollars in loans leads to a loss of conscience-based medicine.
DMBN: Do you anticipate any major developments in the sector in the near future?
Zietman: If we start practicing according to the evidence, it will be an earthquake. Emphasis on safety, patient outcome, evidence-based outcome and doing the right thing – conscience based medicine. What we don’t want to do is restrain the system so far that we stifle innovation.
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