Olalekan Oluwole, MD, MBBS, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, presented results from a real-world Medicare analysis evaluating healthcare resource utilization at newly authorized CAR T-cell therapy centers among patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and multiple myeloma (MM) at the 2025 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition in Orlando, Florida.

The study found that hospitalization length, ICU transfers, and 30-day readmission rates were comparable to those at established Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT)-accredited centers. 

Dr Oluwole concluded, “Of course, we want every center to be FACT-accredited, but while they are waiting for the FACT accreditation, it may be important to see that they're still able to provide almost as good care as can be.”

Transcript:

Hello. I am Olalekan Oluwole, associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and I'm excited to share the presentation at ASH. This was a work done by my colleagues and I, and the title is "Real World Healthcare Resource Utilization Following CAR T-Cell Therapy in US Patients Treated in Newly Authorized Treatment Centers."

In the United States, CAR-T is becoming widespread and the need to expand to as many centers as we can is good for our patients. It turns out that it takes some time for these centers to become accredited once they're able to give CAR-Ts. The question arose whether it makes a difference, whether there's any problem with these centers who are just coming on board that may not necessarily have FACT accreditation. Of course, we want every center to have FACT accreditation, but it may not be realistic to wait for that before delivering care.

This was a retrospective study, observational, of Medicare claims data, January 2023 to June 2025. That included nationwide patients that were treated with CAR-T. The specific outcomes were hospital admissions, intensive care unit transfers, length of hospital stay, 30-day readmission rates. We also looked at how many physicians visits they had, whether they were inpatient or outpatient, pretty much looking at what sort of resources were utilized and comparing to historical controls.

What we found out was that a total of 44 patients received CAR T-cell therapy across 4 new centers in that time period. Of these, 26 had diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and 3 had other cancers, the remaining 15 were multiple myeloma patients. What were the results? Among the large lymphoma group, the main length of stay for patients who were hospitalized was 18 days, and the ICU admission rates were pretty infrequent in less than about 11% of patients. The readmission rate post-discharge was also not as much.

Now for the multiple myeloma patients, the main hospital length of state turned out to be about 11.5 days, and the 30-day readmission rate was also less than 15%. This was quite interesting to see that even though these were new centers, the utilization of healthcare resources, for example, the number of days of hospitalization, the number of readmission post discharge, the rate of transfer to the ICU was not really much different from the historical controls.

Our conclusion from this retrospective analysis was that these new centers that were able to offer CAR-Ts are able to do that across a diverse geographic group. They're able to do that across diverse diseases: multiple myeloma and large cell lymphoma. They observed utilization patterns suggest that what sort of healthcare resources they utilized were not much different than what we are used to seeing with even centers that are really advanced. Of course, we want every center to be FACT -accredited, but while they are waiting for the FACT accreditation, it may be important to see that they're still able to provide almost as good care as can be. Thank you very much.

Source:

Oluwole O, Lakzadeh P, Lau C, et al. Real-world healthcare resource utilization (HCRU) following CAR T-cell therapy in US patients treated in newly authorized treatment centers. Dec 6-9, 2025; Orlando, FL. Abstract: 4411