Dr Neal Dave Discusses NCODA's Pharmacy Accreditation Programs

The National Community Oncology Dispensing Association (NCODA) is starting to see inquiries from pharmacies interested in new multispecialty accreditiation program, says Neal Dave, PharmD, executive director of pharmacy operations, Texas Oncology.

Transcript

What are some updates on NCODA’s Center of Excellence Medically Integrated Pharmacy accreditation programs for multi-specialty and multi-specialty with oncology focus?

NCODA started with the oncology focus with their oncology MID [medically integrated dispensing] accreditation. I don't remember how many practices that started it, but we've started the NCODA accreditation for oncology. I know other MID practices are doing it.

NCODA has recently started their specialty multi-specialty accreditation program. And they are starting to get inquiries on pharmacies that want to go through that program as well. I can say the key differentiator is that it is more patient focused and less focused on operations that are outside of the pharmacy realm, and some of the admin that may or may not make sense in that particular practice.

How do these NCODA programs improve value-based care, and how do you measure this?

There's a couple of ways. SO, NCODA has PQIs; they're positive quality interventions. And they're typically 1-page documents that have a key intervention for a specific drug. And those drive value and quality care if you follow them, or if you catch something.

Say there's a new drug that's out and the patient is progressing on their therapy, and there's a new drug out and that new drug gets missed, or doesn't get ordered. Well, that's a key spot for positive quality intervention. And that's kind of how it started, actually. And the first one was for Ibrance [palbociclib], a long time ago, when hormonal therapy was a mainstay in breast cancer only before CDK4s [cyclin-dependent kinase 4 inhibitors] really took over as additional therapy. And those are areas where you can address or help improve quality care for patients when they get the right treatment at the right time when they're ready for it.

The other way is through NCODA’s waste tracker and cost avoidance tracker. You can really show how much waste is avoided or lack of waste at an MID by just reporting all the additional fields patients get when they're on one of these oncology medications. So many times, when a patient starts a new oral oncolytic, they are dose reduced, or dose adjusted, or their dose is held. But they come back with multiple bottles of an old dose that they've gotten dose reduced, but the old dosage still got sent to them. And so that's a $20,000 waste. Or, if you avoid that waste, that's another way to show that you're providing value to that patient.