Dr Ray Page Outlines Benefits, Challenges of Using Clinical Pathways

Some independent practices utilize clinical pathways to mange complex regimens, but lack of education and cost concerns may limit practices' use of clinical pathways, said Ray Page, DO, PhD, president and director of research at The Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders.

Transcript:

What are the challenges and benefits of using clinical pathways for an independent practice?

I think independent practices have a great opportunity to use those clinical pathways in a way to create efficiencies within the practice in order to better manage complex chemotherapy regimens, as well as to manage much of the complex symptoms associated with with cancer patients actively on therapy. I think a lot of practices have not implemented pathways yet, partly because of just lack of education or exposure. I think some practices feel that they have their own methodologies in place just by doing it on their own. Then sometimes there's the cost of a pathway system that comes into play. As far as Quality Cancer Care Alliance (QCCA) goes, as a group and through group purchasing, we've been able to create what I think are financially advantageous opportunities to be able to run clinical pathways within independent practice groups.

How does participating in Quality Cancer Care Alliance foster productive use of clinical pathways?

Clinical pathways is a core element, in my opinion, on being able to provide value-based care. That's one of the major objectives of QCCA as a network of strong independent practices in order to optimize value-based delivery of care. QCCA feels strongly that the implementation of clinical pathways and symptom management pathways is part of the stuff that we need in order to achieve value-based delivery of care.