Dr Lalan Wilfong: EOM, Clinical Pathways Among Key Topics at PCOC 2023

Lalan Wilfong, MD, senior vice president of payer and care transformation at The US Oncology Network, gives a preview of what to look forward to at the 2023 Patient-Centered Oncology Care^® (PCOC) meeting, including his 2 sessions on clinical pathways and the Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM).

Transcript

What makes you excited for PCOC 2023?

PCOC is one of the conferences where you have a diverse group of people coming in talking about oncology, oncology payment reform, and truly what the future of oncology holds. It's enjoyable to have the diverse opinions and be able to network and socialize and hear from some of the leaders in the industry.

What will you be discussing in your panel, "Can Clinical Pathways Have Burnout, Too?"

Clinical pathways have been around for a while and are very important in the care of cancer patients, but they've kind of lost their meaning as many different organizations have come up with pathways for various reasons. So, it's important we take a look back at pathways and understand what is the true nature of pathways, what are they for, and what do we need to do to make pathways still remain relevant for the future.

Can you also give a preview of your panel on the EOM and payment models in general?

The Enhancing Oncology Model is the successor to the Oncology Care Model, but uptake in the EOM was fairly low. It's going to be interesting to hear about why practices decided to go into the EOM and why they didn't. But I think it's important to think about oncology payment reform because it's here to stay. We've seen significant changes in the way that we think about oncology payment now and in the future, so it'll be an interesting session to talk about the EOM, what it is, why people went in and out, and what does that mean for the future of oncology payment reform.

With so much conversation about the EOM last year, what more is there to discuss now that it has been implemented?

We've been talking about the Enhancing Oncology Model for a while. It came out a couple of years ago, practices finally had to make a decision about whether they were in or out this summer, so it'll be interesting to hear what that meant for practices, the processes they went through in that decision making. And why are we still talking about it? Especially when only 44 practices went into the model, why does it remain relevant? It'll be interesting to talk about that.

PCOC 2023 is hosted by The American Journal of Managed Care^® and will take place November 7-8, 2023, in Nashville, Tennessee. Make sure to tune into more of our PCOC coverage here.