Mike Fazio Highlights How Oncology Practices Can Take Advantage of the Delay to OCF

There are ways practices can take advantage of the delay of Oncology Care First (OCF) to continue learning from their experience in Oncology Care Model (OCM), said Mike Fazio, senior vice president of Client Services at Archway Health.

Transcript

With Oncology Care First being delayed, are there ways that practices can take advantage of that delay to take what they've learned while participating in Oncology Care Model to make a smoother transition and be successful?

It's been, I think, positively received, at least from the customers that we support for OCM, that the program has been extended a year. So, that anxiety of a new model, and what that will look like is now pushed back. And so, practices can still use the data that they're getting from CMS for OCM to figure out how to refine their model, what works and what doesn't. It is still a pilot, so that pilot continues for another year.

So, using data to improve quality, which is a component of OCM, there's still time to do that. So, things like is your symptom management tool, really reducing ED [emergency department] visits and hospitalizations? You have more time to look at that and to tweak your model. Introducing palliative care early to increase hospice use at end of life—are those processes working or not? And what can you change? And the same thing with supportive therapies and in using biosimilars. So, are those taking an effect, and can we measure those results? We have more time in data to see are those changes happening and are those levers being moved so that you can address changes in the model?

So, I guess you could use the extra time to refine your model and see what's working and what isn't. So that when OCF is announced, and if it's the right program for you, you can have a better sense of what really worked in OCM. So just given the more time that you have.