Cancer Trials For TRICARE Patients

WASHINGTON (CN) – The Defense Department plans to add TRICARE insurance coverage for some National Cancer Institute’s Phase I studies for certain beneficiaries, and requests public comment.     The coverage would be only for those trials “with clinical or preclinical data providing a reasonable expectation that the treatment will be at least as effective as the non-investigational alternative.” The patients it would cover would be those “for whom standard treatment has been or would be ineffective, does not exist, or there is no superior non-investigational treatment alternative.”     Phase I trials are the first clinical treatment trials conducted on people. The studies evaluate how a new drug should be given (by mouth, injected into the blood, or injected into the muscle), how often, and what dose is safe.