Quality Care Cancer Alliance (QCCA) | Strategic Alliance Partnership

Sibel Blau, MD, president and CEO of the Quality Cancer Care Alliance (QCCA), talks about why QCCA and National Cancer Care Alliance (NCCA) launched Exigent Research.

During the Quality Cancer Care Alliance Summer 2022 National Leadership Summit, Hatim Husain, MD, discusses how HER2 exploration in lung cancer differs from that in breast cancer, as well as novel therapies being explored for HER2 and other disease targets.

Hatim Husain, MD, discusses how National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) treatment guidelines adjust to meet the treatment needs of patients with lung cancer.

Hatim Husain, MD, associate professor in the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego, discuses must-haves for successful biomarker testing in lung cancer—in particular, non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)—and how the field is adapting to the targeted treatment needs of its patients.

Value management, theranostics, clinical trial access, and a mobile pharmacy are major innovations being integrated into independent community oncology practices, as highlighted at the Quality Cancer Care Alliance Summer 2022 National Leadership Summit.

The second day of Patient-Centered Oncology Care® 2021 featured a panel discussion, “Oncology Care Transitions: Bridging the Gaps Across the Patient Journey.”

Biomarker testing and remote patient monitoring are just 2 areas of research presented during the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

With the onset of the pandemic, the increased use of telemedicine has been the biggest change to how cancer care is being delivered; however, whether telemedicine is here to stay depends on the regulators and payers, said Amy Ellis, chief quality officer at Northwest Medical Specialties.

Setting up a new tool to capture electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) requires a lot of prep work to ensure patients are comfortable and ready to use the tool, said Amy Ellis, chief quality officer at Northwest Medical Specialties.

With so many different oncology alternative payment models (APMs) available, choosing the right ones to participate in might simply mean finding which ones already align with what a practice is doing, said Amy Ellis, chief quality officer at Northwest Medical Specialties.

Adapting to telehealth was not difficult, but practice transformation around telehealth has been more difficult, and there remains the future uncertainty around continued reimbursement, said Sibel Blau, MD, of Northwest Medical Specialties and Quality Cancer Care Alliance.

Telehealth is helpful, but it is not enough to make up for the delay in cancer diagnoses occurring as a result of the pandemic, said Sibel Blau, MD, of Northwest Medical Specialties and Quality Cancer Care Alliance.

Feedback from the field is incredibly important when participating in new payment models like the Oncology Care Model, said Basit Chaudhry, MD, PhD, founder of Tuple Health.

The economics of cancer care remain a major concern as practices try to figure out how to deal with the cost of providing cancer care, said Sibel Blau, MD, medical oncologist, Northwest Medical Specialties, and president and CEO, Quality Cancer Care Alliance (QCCA).

There are several risk factors to review when determining whether or not a patient is high risk for lung cancer and should be screened, said Joanna Thompson, multidisciplinary program manager, Highlands Oncology Group.

There is a lot of variation among commercial payers, but broadly speaking they are expected to start moving to adopt what Medicare does, said Basit Chaudhry, MD, PhD, founder of Tuple Health.

With the start of Oncology Care First (OCF) being delayed, practices participating in the Oncology Care Model have more time to set themselves up to success when they transition to OCF, said Basit Chaudhry, MD, PhD, founder of Tuple Health.

The Caris Precision Oncology Alliance has brought together academic institutions and community practices with the goal of performing research and exchanging evidence and ideas for new types of tests, said W. Michael Korn, MD.

Highlands Oncology Group has found the most success getting the word out about its lung cancer screening program by directly engaging with primary care physicians (PCPs), said Joanna Thompson of Highlands Oncology Group.

There are certain adjustments that CMS can make to Oncology Care First (OCF) during the delay that CMS is already doing successfully in other alternative payment models, said Mike Fazio, at Archway Health.

Throughout the Oncology Care Model (OCM), practices have dealt with a data lag, but in Oncology Care First (OCF) data is expected to be released more frequently, said Mike Fazio, of Archway Health.

Delayed care due to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has created a lot of uncertainty around alternative payment models (APMs) like the Oncology Care Model (OCM), said Basit Chaudhry, MD, PhD, founder of Tuple Health.

There are certain diseases, like lung cancer, that are leading the way in precision medicine and where broad molecular testing is recommended, said W. Michael Korn, MD, of University of California, San Francisco, and Caris Life Sciences.

There are ways practices can take advantage of the delay of Oncology Care First (OCF) to continue learning from their experience in Oncology Care Model (OCM), said Mike Fazio, of Archway Health.

In the past, there was a greater discrepancy in access to precision oncology testing, which has closed somewhat; however, there are some disenfranchised populations who still struggle to access this care.

The Highlands Oncology Group partners with primary care providers to identify patients at high risk of lung cancer so the specialists can do a more in-depth screening, explained Joanna Thompson, multidisciplinary program manager, Highlands Oncology Group.

In a pair of sessions at the Quality Cancer Care Alliance Virtual Fall Leadership Summit, speakers discussed the promise of precision medicine for not only informing individuals’ cancer treatment decisions but also identifying individuals at high risk before disease develops.

As the costs of cancer care continue to rise in the United States, eyes are increasingly turning to payment reform.

The Quality Cancer Care Alliance is focusing on 2 major topics: value-based care and innovation, and precision oncology is the intersection of those 2 issues, said Sibel Blau, MD.

There is a lot of uncertainty among providers participating in federal alternative payment models (APMs) given the general election and the upcoming Supreme Court case on the Affordable Care Act (ACA).