PCOC 2023: Bringing Stakeholders Together to Advance Cancer Care Delivery

The annual Patient-Centered Oncology Care^® (PCOC) meeting from The American Journal of Managed Care^® (AJMC^®) returns to Nashville, Tennessee, on November 7-8, bringing oncology stakeholders together for 2 days of discussions and presentations on the rapidly changing oncology care landscape. This year’s theme, “Navigating the Cancer Journey,” sets the stage for discussions around improving the quality of cancer care while mitigating financial toxicity, as well as integrating the latest therapies and innovations into clinical practice.

Like its predecessors, the 12th annual PCOC meeting aims to bring a community of providers, payers, policy leaders, and members of the pharmaceutical industry together to foster conversations around innovation and care improvement in the oncology space. The in-person event will cover a wide range of topics impacting oncology stakeholders while setting aside time for networking and informal discussion of the various panels and presentations taking place.

Meeting co-chairs Joseph Alvarnas, MD, vice president of Government Affairs and senior medical director for AccessHope, City of Hope; and Kashyap Patel, MD, CEO of Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates and immediate past president of the Community Oncology Alliance, are editor-in-chief and associate editor, respectively, of Evidence-Based Oncology™, a publication of AJMC.

The meeting agenda includes expert speakers and panel discussions, with topics of discussion including the intersection of cancer genomics and health equity, burnout in clinical pathways, value-based payment models, and considerations for cancer treatment sequencing. The patient journey will also be explored, with panels discussing financial toxicity in the cancer journey and tools to engage patients throughout treatment.

Keynote speaker Merril Hoge, former National Football League running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Bears, will discuss the patient perspective of overcoming cancer. Hoge is a survivor of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and has been cancer-free since 2003.

Featured speaker Kathryn E. Hudson, MD, director of survivorship at Texas Oncology, will discuss the utility of electronic patient-reported outcomes to enhance cancer care in a value-based landscape. Financial toxicity, an increasingly substantial issue for patients with cancer in a landscape of rising costs, will be highlighted during a talk from featured speaker Ryan W. Huey, MD, MS, assistant professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Johann Brandes, MD, will speak to precision medicine in non–small cell lung cancer, which has seen a rise in the number of targetable disease characteristics in recent years.

Another hot topic in the oncology care space, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) will be the center of a fireside chat taking place on the first day of the meeting, “Navigating the PBM Landscape: How a Health Care Economist Sees It.” The chat will feature Erin Trish, PhD, codirector of the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center and associate professor of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics at the USC School of Pharmacy; will field questions from Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, chief medical officer at Tennessee Oncology.