Covering the cost of high-priced therapies like CAR-T is ‘not sustainable,’ hospital chief says

Hospitals are thrilled that they’re now able to offer cancer patients pioneering CAR-T treatments, but they’re also running into the omnipresent problem surrounding these and other next-generation therapies: cost.

In a speech Wednesday at the Personalized Medicine Conference, Dr. Betsy Nabel, the president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said her hospital and others in the Partners HealthCare system are not being reimbursed fully when they treat patients with CAR-T therapies, leaving the providers to subsidize the treatments.

“The finances are not sustainable,” she said at the conference, which was being held at Harvard Medical School.

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