Speaking at the 42nd annual meeting of the Association of Community Cancer Centers, Cancerscape, held in Washington, DC, Lindsay Conway, MSEd, managing director, Advisory Board Company, brought the oncologists in the audience up to speed on Medicare’s reimbursement strategies for the coming year.
“Our team takes up strategic and operational issues that our members view as problematic and seek our advice on,” said Conway, adding that the issues could range from reimbursement to financing.
The following is an outline of the tips Conway provided:
“Oncologists need to be aware that nearly 700 cancer-related biosimilars could hit the market in the near future,” Conway said, and there’s no escaping this new therapeutic option. She did agree that current barrier seems to be physician awareness about a biosimilar product and their confidence with replacing the reference molecule with the biosimilar.
“CMS still has to iron out the details, such as performance categories, provider payment, interchange between the 2 tracks, APM participant qualification criteria, etc.” added Conway.
She ended her review on a high note, speaking to CMS’ decision to reimburse providers for the time they spend on advance-care planning (ACP) discussions with their patients. “CMS has said that all primary care physicians and advanced practitioners should be eligible for ACP conversations with their patients,” Conway said.
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