Dr Sibel Blau Explains What the Results of OCM Have Shown

Results from the first 2 performance periods of the Oncology Care Model (OCM) highlighted areas where Northwest Medical Specialties was doing well and areas it could improve, said Sibel Blau, MD, medical oncologist at Northwest Medical Specialties, PLLC.

Transcript

After viewing 2 performance period reports under the Oncology Care Model, how did your practice do and what areas of opportunity or additional improvement did you identify?

We were surprised how well we did in certain areas compared to the rest of the country. The costs in the emergency room admissions, readmissions, hospitalizations—we did pretty well on that. But we had created a system beforehand by extending hours, doing urgent care clinic on the weekends.

So, we did very well on that. The program worked well. I think everybody, including us, we can all improve and we have areas that we are still working on improving.

The area that we didn’t do as well in and need a lot of work—and it was very nice to learn this, because this piqued our attention, and we started focusing on that—is the end-of-life care. So, we did not have as many hospice referrals, or we could have done better in pain management. All those issues related to palliative care, even though we did have an outpatient palliative care program, needed attention. So, we’re working on it.

It was a good experience and also experiment for us to do OCM to realize these issues. We’re working on it.