Welcome to The Breastcancer.org Podcast, the podcast that brings you the latest information on breast cancer research, treatments, side effects, and survivorship issues through expert interviews, as well as personal stories from people affected by breast cancer. Here's your host, Breastcancer.org Senior Editor, Jamie DePolo.
Jamie DePolo: Hello, I’m Jamie DePolo, senior editor at Breastcancer.org. I’m podcasting live from the 2023 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. My guest is Richard Paxman. He is CEO of Paxman Scalp Cooling Company, if that’s the correct way to say it, and he’s going to talk to us about some updates to their patient assistance program to help more people take advantage of scalp cooling.
Richard, welcome to the podcast.
Richard Paxman: Thank you so much and a real pleasure to be here with you today. And yeah, so Paxman’s vision really is to ensure that no matter where you are in the world, no matter what your income, ethnicity, type of chemo, you have access to scalp cooling at an affordable price or a more accessible way, and as we know at this moment in time that can be difficult for some patients.
So, with that in mind, what we’ve done is, in line with our new business model where we’re looking at for the reimbursement and insurance coverage for scalp cooling, we’ve launched the Paxman Patient Assistance Program. So, that program, which is used and available at sites using our new Buy and Bill model, really allows fair access to all patients.
So, if a patient is underinsured or uninsured, what we will do, is we’ll assess them for our patient assistance program and if they are six times the federal poverty level or below, ultimately they will get free goods. So, in essence, free access to scalp cooling. Now six times FPL is around $87,000 dollars, I think. Apologies, I’m a British citizen. You can probably tell by the accent. But it’s a fairly robust and generous program to support those patients that really need it.
Jamie DePolo: Sure.
Richard Paxman: If you’re not under the new Buy and Bill model at the hospital, then you can also look at other foundation support with the likes of HairToStay. They do an amazing job. They support patients that are three times the federal poverty level, and they will cover roughly 80% of the cost of scalp cooling, and we again at Paxman discount all our pricing for any foundation that we work with.
So, it’s always really important to ask at your cancer center what options there are available and if your cancer center’s unsure, you can always email Paxman as well and we’ve got a great customer service support team to help you and figure out what’s best.
Jamie DePolo: Okay. Great. And so my question is, what if somebody doesn’t really know that much about scalp cooling and -- this happened to a friend of mine -- her medical oncologist kind of said, well, you can try it, I don’t know, didn’t really offer a lot of information, is it best then to reach out directly through your website?
Richard Paxman: Yeah, and I think that sometimes just a bit of a lack of education, and no disrespect to anyone that says that, but ultimately it’s a busy field, there’s lots of information, and scalp cooling is still relatively new in America.
Jamie DePolo: Sure.
Richard Paxman: So, we recommend reach out to us. What we can do is connect you with other patients to have that peer-to-peer learning experience. We have a great Facebook group where you can go on and listen to thousands of patients all actively talk about scalp cooling and I know even Breastcancer.org yourselves have got great information on your website to support patients in making that informed decision.
Jamie DePolo: And I had a question about insurance coverage. I know that sometimes it gets covered. Sometimes it doesn’t. Are you working in that area at all or is that expanded a bit?
Richard Paxman: That’s a real focus for us at the moment, back to that access piece. So, we’ve been working for the last five years in this space to be honest, looking at coding with the American Medical Association, getting scalp cooling on the guidelines, working with CMS to set certain codes and rates.
What we’ve seen since maybe mid-July, well July 2022, the launch of our new Buy and Bill model, so that in essence switches that self-payer treatment, which is what most of cancer centers are using today, to where we actually start working with the provider who buys the cooling caps and then in essence bills the insurer to provide the service.
We’re seeing about 80% coverage with our customers that are on this new model. So, really, really exciting, and the payment rates, charge rates, are looking really promising. So, we believe over the next 12 months this is going to grow across the U.S. and ultimately that means more access for patients, which is…which is what we want.
Jamie DePolo: Sure. Great. Richard. Thank you so much. This has been really informative.
Richard Paxman: Thank you so much. Lovely to see you.
Thank you for listening to The Breastcancer.org Podcast. Please subscribe on iTunes or whatever you listen to podcasts. To share your thoughts about this or any episode, email us at podcast@breastcancer.org, or leave feedback on the podcast episode landing page on our website, and remember, you can find a lot more information about breast cancer at Breastcancer.org, and you can connect with thousands of people affected by breast cancer by joining our online community.
