Patient Priorities Should be Paramount when Measuring Quality in Cancer Care According to Panelists at NCCN Policy Summit

WASHINGTON, D.C. [September 12, 2019] — The National Comprehensive Cancer Network^® (NCCN^®) hosted a policy summit at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, today, addressing how to define, measure, and apply quality in cancer care. Speakers across the cancer care continuum shared perspectives on current quality measurement initiatives including the Oncology Care Model and the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), and looked ahead to future trends in this area.

“A lot of effort has already gone toward measuring quality via various reporting programs in order to improve performance,” said Ronald S. Walters, MD, MBA, MHA, MS, Associate Head for the Institute for Cancer Care Innovation, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Chair, NCCN Board of Directors. “However, there are still many opportunities to expand quality metrics in order to make them more relevant and meaningful for both providers and patients. Feasible and low-burden measures need to represent quality across the continuum of care, and be as coordinated and non-fragmented as possible. This summit gives us a chance to discuss the current status for quality measurement programs while also thinking about what we may need in the future.”

Speakers discussed how quality measurement can serve as a tool for improving patient outcomes.

“Measuring the quality of cancer care that we deliver is essential for understanding current performance and outcomes and identifying any gaps in care,” said Lawrence N. Shulman, MD, FACP, FASCO, Deputy Director for Clinical Services, Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s naïve to assume that our cancer care is excellent without measuring it. We must be thoughtful in choosing measures that are relevant to meaningful quality and linked to patient outcomes. Measurements should be easily attainable without adding administrative burdens—ideally by extracting them from electronic health records or cancer registries, rather than by manual chart abstraction—and must be repeatedly measured with an approach geared toward continuous process improvement.”

Many panelists wanted to see patient preferences play a much larger role in defining quality cancer care, and called for an increased emphasis on patient reported outcomes.

“Cancer persists as the second leading cause of death in our nation. With complicated and costly treatment options to consider, aligning quality measures allows providers and clinicians to put patients and their priorities at the center of care,” said Shantanu Agrawal, MD, MPhil, President and CEO, National Quality Forum (NQF).

“We have to define exactly what we mean by outcomes and make sure to prioritize what is most important to patients, in a focused, aligned, and thoughtful way,” said Tracy Wong, MBA, Director, Quality and Value, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. “Focusing on value has helped to elevate the measures that are important to patients—such as avoiding hospitalization—and shined a spotlight on financial toxicity. As patient-reported outcome measurement becomes part of routine care in oncology, new ways to characterize quality will emerge, with the patients’ voice at the center. Developing intuitive patient-facing tools should help with patient-level symptom reporting and group-level performance evaluation, without overburdening patients.”

“We need a unified, national quality reporting program with defined standards for patient-centered cancer care,” agreed Kashyap Patel, MD, Oncologist, Managing Partner, Carolina Blood and Cancer Care. “I would like to see supported incentives for providers that implement patient-centered care through voluntary shared savings programs.”

Those with experience in implementing value-based models, such as the Oncology Care Model (OCM), shared insights into successes and opportunities for improvement. 

“The OCM is multi-faceted and complex, and practice transformation takes time, but it is valuable and worth the investment,” said Diana Verrilli, MS, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Practice Solutions for McKesson and The US Oncology Network. “By participating in the OCM, community oncology practices are empowered to become leaders in this value-based world rather than be passive participants. There are 15 practices in The US Oncology Network participating in CMMI’s OCM, and we’ve witnessed an improved patient experience for Medicare beneficiaries as well as an increase in pathways and guidelines adherence. The ultimate goal is providing high-quality and high-value care to cancer patients, and this is a step in the right direction.”

Kerin Adelson, MD, Chief Quality Officer and Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Smilow Cancer Hospital, talked about the impact that OCM had at her institution. “We used program revenue to build infrastructure in order to reduce acute care utilization. This included opening an oncology urgent care center, launching a care management program, and implementing clinical pathways across our network. We developed dashboards to measure individual providers’ patterns of care and systematically shared the data with them. Claims data shows that we have reduced the number of emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and post-acute care use, while keeping those costs stable. However, our total cost of care claims data shows that for patients on systemic therapy, cost of care has increased overall. Future cost containment efforts will only succeed if efforts are also directed at curtailing the rising cost of pharmaceuticals.”

Other panelists concurred that OCM and others might not address the full picture, and noted that there are many challenges to improving quality measurement.

“Many of the current value-based payment models include measures of utilization, such as emergency department visits, which may not necessarily reflect poor quality,” said Nancy Keating, MD, MPH, Professor of Health Care Policy & Medicine, Harvard Medical School. “Patient experience is a key aspect of quality, but collecting that data is expensive and limited by patients who aren’t able to respond, are getting care from more than one practice, or who find new doctors after a poor experience. Outcome measures such as survival are also important, but adequate risk adjustment is challenging and survival is often influenced more by nonclinical factors, such as socioeconomic status, than by cancer treatment.”

However, the panelists were hopeful that advancing technology and data collection can play a role in improving quality measurement for cancer care going forward. Jacqueline Waldrop, MS, from Pfizer’s Global Medical Grants team, noted her interest in exploring how grant-supported Quality Improvement (QI) projects could provide insights into new metrics for quality in cancer care and potentially advance the conversation about quality-based payment structures. She described some examples of grant-funded QI projects where quality is being measured in innovative ways such as using a technology platform to track patient-reported outcomes, improving biomarker testing rates, appropriately using the biomarker information to inform treatment plans, and increasing patient referrals to clinical trials.

“Quality measurement is both critical and challenging in oncology, but real world data will increasingly help all of us as a community to better understand where we are succeeding and where there are still gaps,” said Gaurav Singal, MD, Chief Data Officer, Foundation Medicine. “As biomarkers and cancer care become more complex, I anticipate that these quality measures will rely not only on adherence to guidelines but also on the use of real world data to inform decision-making where randomized trial data aren’t available or don’t apply.”

The summit began with an introduction from Wui-Jin Koh, MD, Chief Medical Officer, NCCN. The panels were moderated by Clifford Goodman, PhD, Senior Vice President of The Lewin Group, and also included Alan Balch, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, National Patient Advocate Foundation; Reena Duseja, MD, MS, Chief Medical Officer for Quality Measurement, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS); Bryan Loy, MD, MBA, Physician Lead – Oncology, Laboratory, and Personalized Medicine, Humana; Jim Martineau, MBA, Director, Product Management & Operations, Flatiron; Alexandra Chong, PhD, OCM Team Lead, Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). NCCN Senior Policy and Advocacy Director Alyssa Schatz, MSW, provided closing remarks.

NCCN will return to the National Press Club on December 11 to continue the conversation at the upcoming NCCN Patient Advocacy Summit: Delivering Value for Patients across the Oncology Ecosystem. That summit will further explore value-based care from the patient perspective, and examine ways to remove barriers to patient-centered care. Visit NCCN.org/policy for more information, and join the online conversation with the hashtag #NCCNPolicy.

About the National Comprehensive Cancer Network

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network^® (NCCN^®) is a not-for-profit alliance of 28 leading cancer centers devoted to patient care, research, and education. NCCN is dedicated to improving and facilitating quality, effective, efficient, and accessible cancer care so patients can live better lives. Through the leadership and expertise of clinical professionals at NCCN Member Institutions, NCCN develops resources that present valuable information to the numerous stakeholders in the health care delivery system. By defining and advancing high-quality cancer care, NCCN promotes the importance of continuous quality improvement and recognizes the significance of creating clinical practice guidelines appropriate for use by patients, clinicians, and other health care decision-makers around the world.

The NCCN Member Institutions are: Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, Omaha, NE; Case Comprehensive Cancer Center/University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center and Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, Cleveland, OH; City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, CA; Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center | Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Boston, MA; Duke Cancer Institute, Durham, NC; Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA; Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT; Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center/Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Seattle, WA; The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, MD; Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, Chicago, IL; Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, Phoenix/Scottsdale, AZ, Jacksonville, FL, and Rochester, MN; Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY; Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL; The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, Columbus, OH; O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB, Birmingham, AL; Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, Buffalo, NY; Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO; St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital/The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN; Stanford Cancer Institute, Stanford, CA; UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, La Jolla, CA; UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, CA; University of Colorado Cancer Center, Aurora, CO; University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center, Ann Arbor, MI; The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX; University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center, Madison, WI; Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, TN; and Yale Cancer Center/Smilow Cancer Hospital, New Haven, CT.

Clinicians, visit NCCN.org. Patients and caregivers, visit NCCN.org/patients. Media, visit NCCN.org/news. Follow NCCN on Twitter @NCCN, Facebook @NCCNorg, and Instagram @NCCNorg.

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