December 2016

At the Community Oncology Alliance (COA) Payer Exchange Summit V, 2 employer groups and a provider participated on a panel to provide practical insight into the extraordinary challenges and decisions that employers and employees with a cancer diagnosis are faced with.

At the Payer Exchange Summit V, in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, oncologists and payers came together to discuss the role of collaboration and data sharing for the successful implementation of the Oncology Care Model (OCM).

At the Community Oncology Alliance (COA) Payer Exchange Summit V, panelists provided insights for successful implementation of payment models in oncology clinics.

Bruce Gould, MD, president and medical director, Northwest Georgia Oncology Center, and president of the Community Oncology Alliance, presented an overview of how cancer care has improved over the years and what the current challenges are.

The guideline recommends that cancer patients should receive palliative care early and in parallel with their active treatment plan.

Chemotherapy-associated alopecia, which drastically changes how a person looks and feels, can significantly impact the patient’s quality of life, over and above the physical exhaustion associated with their treatment. Raising awareness among providers, patients, and their caregivers can help.

A lag in policy changes has resulted in significant variation across palliative care programs for treating advanced illnesses. A recent shift in policy has, however, allowed small-scale testing of community-based palliative care delivery and some innovations in other delivery systems.

Palliative care is an underutilized and powerful resource in the drive towards value. In the current article, we review published evidence and highlight how Medicare Advantage plans, accountable care organizations, and oncology practices can benefit from concurrent palliative care under value-based payments.

By using telemedicine and relocating the center of care to where a person lives, we have an opportunity to address more unmet demand for palliative care, while giving more control to the seriously ill to meet their stated needs.

These are uncertain times in healthcare and the anxiety levels of stakeholders remain high as everyone waits to see how the appointments and policy changes within the new administration will impact healthcare in the United States in the near future.

This article examines the integration of palliative care in a community cancer center-an example of how one program integrated palliative care.