Barry Russo on Quality Measures Data and Value Frameworks

Barry Russo, CEO of The Center for Cancer & Blood Disorders, discussed how his practice continues to collect quality and claims data from a number of sources, even though it isn’t easy. Russo also said that payers are not particularly interested in participating in a value framework, instead choosing to focus on the oncology care model (OCM).

Transcript (slightly modified)

How is your practice collecting and using data from quality measures?

We are collecting data from claims, we’re collecting data from chart review, from record review, and also from what our case managers and our triage nurses and our care management team overall is doing. We’re collecting data from all those sources, and we’re using it for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s not easy to collect, but we’re using it for the purposes of our QOPI [Quality Oncology Practice Initiative] certification, our COC [certified outpatient coder] certification, our OCM project, our Aetna project, where we have to provide data in both claims data and quality data and information to all those projects that we’re involved in. So it’s something we’re doing every day, and a lot of.

Have you considered using any of the value frameworks (from ASCO, ICER, and others) to improve quality while balancing cost?

We’ve considered the ASCO framework, the PCOP [Patient-Centered Oncology Payment] program, but we haven’t had a payer who’s been interested in PCOP, because it does require some billing changes and some challenges that would be on the payer side, for their ability to process. And we’ve talked to a number of payers about it, but we haven’t had any luck with anybody who’s been tremendously interested in it. Most of our payers today are more focused on this OCM model and something similar to the OCM model.