Quality Care

Medicare models for value-based care in oncology started with the Oncology Care Model (OCM), which was launched in July 2016 and will run until June 2021. Value-based care is here to stay, as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) continues to develop and test more value-based models and tools through the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation. CMS recently released an informal Request for Information on a proposed Oncology Care First model to succeed the first OCM. Commercial payers and state governments are also introducing their own value-based agreements with community oncology practices, hospitals, and health systems. Read More ›

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“There are a number of ways to go wrong when you’re trying to improve something,” said Kaveh G. Shojania, MD, Director, Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, University of Toronto, Canada, and Editor-in-Chief, BMJ Quality & Safety, who delivered the keynote address at the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium. Read More ›

There’s really only one way to identify how patients are coping with serious illness: by asking them, according to Thomas J. Smith, MD, FACP, Director of Palliative Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD. Read More ›

Although many quality measures exist in oncology, few efforts have been undertaken to prioritize, measure, and report quality and costs for an entire region. A recent multiyear, multistakeholder effort to characterize quality of care and costs for Washington State oncology practices revealed that increased quality may be associated with a reduced cost of care in oncology. Read More ›

Opioids are the mainstay treatment for cancer pain, but managing the opioid crisis in the United States requires an “all hands on deck” approach, according to Tonya Edwards, MS, MSN, FNP-C, Nurse Practitioner, Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX. Read More ›

Integrating research findings and clinical trial evidence into healthcare policy and clinical practice is not always simple, according to David Chambers, DPhil, MSc, Deputy Director for Implementation Science, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, at the 2017 Quality Care Symposium. Read More ›

The number one stressor for patients with cancer is no longer the fear of dying from their disease; rather, it is fear of their financial obligations because of treatment, said Dan Sherman, MA, LPC, Founder and President, the NaVectis Group, at the 2017 Quality Care Symposium. Read More ›

To improve the quality of cancer care, the voices of patients with cancer should be integrated into care delivery and evaluation, said Neeraj K. Arora, PhD, Associate Director, Healthcare Delivery and Disparities Research, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, Washington, DC, at the 2017 ASCO Quality Care Symposium. Read More ›