Bendcare LLC, Boca Raton, Fla, a professional organization empowering community rheumatologists in the United States, has endorsed Vectra testing by Myriad Genetics Inc, Salt Lake City, for adults with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that mainly attacks the body’s joints, leading to significant morbidity and financial burden. Approximately 60% of people with inadequately treated RA are unable to work within a decade of its onset. The American College of Rheumatology estimates that RA affects 1.3 million people in the United States.
Bendcare is a management services and technology innovation organization for the nation’s largest rheumatology group practice, American Arthritis and Rheumatology Associates (AARA), which includes 160 providers operating in 22 states. Bendcare focuses on optimizing patient care by providing management services and for specialty medical offices, including provider and patient education, product acquisition, and world-class products and data solutions. The organization also offers a prospective data analytics platform called Columbus.
“Our goal is to help our physician members optimize patient care and achieve the best possible outcomes for their patients with RA,” explains Kathryn Garrett, RN, executive vice president for payor solutions, and chair of pathway and therapeutics, at Bendcare. “We believe that Vectra’s ability to objectively assess disease activity and predict radiographic joint damage progression provides unique, important information beyond traditional measures of disease activity. This served as a basis for our decision to update the American Arthritis and Rheumatology Associates pathways to incorporate Vectra and integrate this measure into the Columbus repository.”
Elena Hitraya, MD, PhD, Myriad Autoimmune.
Vectra is a multibiomarker molecular blood test that provides an objective and personalized measure of inflammatory disease activity in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The test is performed periodically to assess changes in disease activity, and is able to predict radiographic progression as a guide for medical management decisions to improve patient outcomes. Recently presented study data demonstrated that Vectra was three times better at predicting radiographic progression in patients with RA than historical measures of disease activity.
Vectra testing is performed at Myriad’s state-of-the-art facility certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA). Test results are reported to the physician 5 to 7 days from shipping of the specimen. Physicians can receive test results by fax or via a private Web portal, VectraView.
“We are pleased to see that the Bendcare organization recognizes the value Vectra brings to physicians and patients and supports Vectra testing for patients with RA,” says rheumatologist Elena Hitraya, MD, PhD, chief medical officer at Myriad Autoimmune.“Vectra can help identify patients at increased risk of disease progression. This knowledge will assist physicians when choosing the appropriate therapeutic regimen and needed frequency for disease monitoring and assessment.”
For further information, visit Myriad Genetics and Bendcare.
