How Flatiron Health’s Network Chief Is Building the Future For (and With) Community Oncology Practices

Quincy Weatherspoon took the helm of Flatiron Health’s point-of-care business at a pivotal time. It was 2024, and the healthtech company widely known for its gold-standard Global Evidence engine was doubling down on its other foundational pillar: the network of community cancer centers nationwide that use Flatiron’s products and services at the point of care.

More than half of people with cancer in the U.S. seek care locally in community oncology centers, independent practices owned and operated by physicians rather than large hospital systems or academic institutions. More than 5,000 providers at 220+ community oncology practices nationwide rely on Flatiron’s point-of-care solutions, most notably its electronic health record OncoEMR™.

Weatherspoon joined Flatiron in 2021 with nearly two decades of experience in global leadership roles across healthcare markets. One of his initial remits was leading growth for Flatiron point-of-care solutions, and marketing for the entire enterprise. When he was promoted to run the Point-of-Care business (POC) three years later, then-CEO Carolyn Starrett publicly praised his deep knowledge of the space and “passion for the practices and patients.” Flatiron needed a leader who understood the landscape and knew the players; Weatherspoon had a track record of success with both.

Under his leadership, POC has thrived.The network of physicians using OncoEMR has had a headcount growth rate over 30% in the last three years, and added partners like Georgia Cancer Specialists within the Northside Hospital Cancer Institute network, where Flatiron sent a team of more than 75 to support go-live across 26 locations to ensure users were ready on Day 1.

But a healthy business wasn’t enough. Weatherspoon knew community oncology faced an evolving set of headwinds – and made it his mission to ensure that Flatiron would evolve alongside them to deliver the support they needed, both today and well into the future.

Assembling groups with backgrounds across oncology spanning clinical, engineering, product and account management, he sent them out to visit Flatiron’s community partners across the country with one task: to listen. What was working well? What wasn’t? What did they need most from a technology partner?

“It was all about seeing what customers truly needed, through a holistic lens,” says Weatherspoon, recalling that one of his cross-functional teams loaded up a Jeep Grand Wagoneer for a multi-state listening tour. “We kept hearing the same themes: reliability, stability, trust.” Another recurring theme emerged: Community oncology centers not only trusted Flatiron, but wanted to entrust the company with more.

The Case for Multi-Specialty Expansion

“Partners would tell us they recognized how much work we’ve done behind the scenes to get our technology to a great place,” Weatherspoon recalls. “Then they would ask us to help them support expansion to other specialty areas. They wanted to grow with one partner instead of having a series of different EMRs for each specialty area. So the question for me and my team became: ‘How can we ensure we are that one partner across the landscape?’ And we have.”

While Flatiron historically has partnered with medical oncologists and a handful of related specializations, Weatherspoon has prioritized multi-specialty partnerships that could culminate in independent urology and other specialty practices. “We continue to take big strides in that area,” Weatherspoon says, adding, “I’m looking forward to the next 12 to 18 months.”

Partners are doing the same. “They put their money where their mouth is. Flatiron sent a team of people to watch our workflow – boots on the ground – then went back, did some changes, and came back and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about this?’” says Dr. Nathan Littlejohn, a urologist at Triple Crown Urology in central and southwest Arkansas. “They even made updates I didn't know I wanted. The open communication, with both sides willing to learn and to work together, has been instrumental in our success.”

Measures of Success

Multi-specialty expansion is just one piece of Weatherspoon’s strategy. While the business is flourishing, he says his focus has never been “growth for the sake of growth. It’s growth with a purpose: to continue transforming community oncology for the better.” This approach has yielded progress on a number of fronts:

Scaling oncology clinical decision support. Flatiron Assist, the company’s EHR-integrated clinical decision support tool, launched in 2019 covering one disease across a handful of practices. Today more than 1,000 physicians use it daily across 29 diseases, combining the latest NCCN guidelines, patient context and practice preferences to guide treatment decisions – plus the data insights to track guideline concordance and pathway adherence. “We’re focused on making it easier for physicians to make the best possible decision for the patient in front of them,” says Weatherspoon. “Now we're moving earlier in the patient journey into testing decision support, closing gaps in on-guideline testing rates so more patients can benefit from precision medicine.”

Integration of precision medicine solutions. Partnerships with a growing number of molecular profiling companies enable oncology providers to digitally order complex genomic tests and receive status updates and results directly in their OncoEMR workflow. In July 2026 Flatiron announced its ninth partnership, with Quest Diagnostics, and the list continues to grow.

Vendor network expansion. New partners specialize in diverse areas including patient financial assistance, patient engagement and revenue cycle management. “Instead of building all technology solutions on our own, we’re keeping our focus on the areas where we have distinct expertise and can add capabilities for our practice partners,” explains Weatherspoon. “These partnerships give our network a richer set of solutions for providers and patients. So that's a win.”

A research partnership with the Community Oncology Alliance. Patients diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and non-small cell lung cancer had longer survival compared to national benchmarks when treated in independent community oncology practices, according to a quality study conducted by Flatiron and the Community Oncology Alliance, published in April 2026.

These groundbreaking results challenge the misperception that the level of care in community oncology is not as high as in other settings. (Another common misconception Weatherspoon encounters is that community oncology centers only operate in rural or underserved communities; in fact they are vital resources in big cities, rural areas and everything in between.) “To see that COA data and know that our technology is helping community oncology care to be viewed as equal or superior to care in big-name systems or teaching hospitals is immensely gratifying,” he says. “I hope it makes a real difference in terms of how people select where they want to be treated.”

Dr. Fred Divers, Chief Medical Officer at American Oncology Network, says partnering with Flatiron has been a game-changer. “We've always known our patients do well in community practices. What we didn't have was evidence to show this on a national scale,” explains Divers, a co-investigator on the study. “Now we do, across more than 200 practices and nearly 250,000 patients. Flatiron brought the research expertise and the data, and they worked with us to help shape the questions along the way. For COA, this is evidence we can put in front of the payers and policymakers who are shaping the future of community practice.”

Two Pillars, One Purpose

For a company that routinely makes headlines for its AI-powered RWE datasets, massive oncology database and growing international research network, POC is smaller in size but equally essential in driving Flatiron’s core mission of improving and extending lives by learning from every person with cancer.

Partnering with community oncology centers allows Flatiron to enable better patient experience and strengthen practice health; it also helps to close the gap between care and research. Data captured at the point of care is de-identified and scaled into evidence for biopharma partners and researchers to use in practice-changing discoveries and drug development. And in turn, point-of-care tools bring the latest treatments, trials and clinical guidelines to providers and the patients they serve. The two are connected by design, with Weatherspoon’s POC unit generating the raw clinical signal and Global Evidence turning it into scientific, regulatory-grade output.

“Quincy is a vital part of Flatiron’s executive team as not only the leader of POC Solutions, but as a peer who is helping to drive connectivity between point-of-care and global evidence,” says Julia Morton, Flatiron’s Chief Operating Officer. “He has dedicated himself to strengthening both, helping us to turn routine patient experiences into actionable research that improves cancer care for all.”

The AI Roadmap

There’s no shortage of work for Weatherspoon in the here and now. But as Chief of Network, he is also shaping the future of Flatiron’s POC business. He is still actively listening to partner practices, and they are increasingly focused on artificial intelligence at the point of care. “They’re saying, ‘You've demonstrated the reliability, the stability, the rigor, the capabilities [with OncoEMR],’” Weatherspoon says, “‘Now how can you bring artificial intelligence to bear for my practice?’”

A partnership with DeepScribe, the ambient AI technology vendor, went live in January 2025 to help providers by automatically populating electronic medical records with visit details. Explains Weatherspoon: “Any chance we have to use AI to reduce ‘pajama time,’ and to combat provider fatigue and burnout, we’re going to go all in.”

Reducing administrative burden is just the beginning. “We want to get to the point where we're using AI to support decision-making at the point of care so that physicians don't have to look outside for information,” he says. “It will be right at their fingertips, built into the workflow, so they can utilize this information in real time as they’re making treatment decisions.”

This means deep collaboration, not a one-size-fits-all suite of services and products. “We build roadmaps with our practice partners,” Weatherspoon says. “We don’t build first and then try to impose a roadmap on anyone. It’s all about the specific needs they have and how we can address them through technology.”

Driven by Purpose

With his experience across healthcare, Weatherspoon believes Flatiron’s unique culture gives it a distinct competitive advantage. “We’re operating in a sweet spot,” he explains. “We have a fast-moving, hungry and proactive culture that is all about a mission to serve patients, and we also are able to leverage the latest technology to do it.”

He is also motivated on a personal level as he works to transform community oncology. The Ohio native, who now resides in Atlanta, had a liver transplant in 2001 and serves on the board of the Georgia Transplant Foundation, whose mission is to educate and enrich the lives of those affected by organ transplant.

“I know how overwhelming it can be when you go to a provider and hear about the different choices you have, and how much it means to know your provider is as well-equipped as possible to give you the care you need,” he reflects. “The patient experience is never far from my mind. We want everyone to be able to get treatment closer to home with the same assurance that they’ll get high-quality treatment and the best possible outcome.”