Equity, Metrics, and the Future of Value-Based Models: Kate Baker, MD

During the 2025 Community Oncology Conference, hosted by the Community Oncology Alliance (COA), Kate Baker, MD, MMHC, a medical oncologist and the medical director of value-based care at Tennessee Oncology, spoke about the innovations in cancer care. She highlighted the growing role of patient navigation and the challenge of addressing social determinants of health (SDOH), as well as the strategies community practices are adopting to deliver more equitable, efficient care.

This transcript was lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What topics featured at COA 2025 were you most excited about?

I think there has been a lot of really interesting content at COA this year, in particular, the content around patient navigation and thinking about how we're enabling our patients to receive better care, eliminating social determinants that might be barriers to them getting good care. There's a lot of interesting work that a lot of community oncology practices are doing in that space. I'm really excited to learn more about that, especially as the medical director of value-based care for Tennessee Oncology.

What are the biggest barriers community oncology practices face when transitioning to value-based care?

I think there are a lot of barriers out there in value-based care, particularly around how to build models that are going to work, and how do we think about what particular quality metrics to measure. How do we define quality, and how do we measure how we're being successful in value-based care models? So, I think there are a lot of barriers right now. I'm not sure that we've figured out value-based care completely in community oncology, but we're getting there, and I think conferences like COA really help us to learn from each other and how to define and measure success in this space.

In your experience, what outcomes have you observed so far while implementing value-based care models?

At Tennessee Oncology, we've had great success with value-based care models and thinking about how we improve, specifically, our quality of care. We've implemented a lot of new measures under OCM [Oncology Care Model] and now EOM [Enhancing Oncology Model] that have really shown to have great benefits for our patients. So, things like navigators and other measures to save on total cost of care. I think a lot of other practices are doing similar things, and I think the next step forward is thinking about how we leverage technology to make these processes more efficient.