April 2017

Quality measures are a key element of value-based payment. Gaps in the measures used by accountable care programs to assess cancer care may ultimately lead to missed opportunities to improve quality and deliver appropriate care for patients. Discern Health and the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC) published a white paper in April 2017, “Improving Oncology Quality Measurement in Accountable Care,” exploring gaps and new measurement opportunities for ten high-impact types of cancer.

The white paper builds on the recommendations of an NPC-sponsored multi-stakeholder roundtable discussion chaired by Drs. Mark McClellan of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and Robert S. Miller of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). The roundtable participants recommended moving beyond limited condition-specific process measures to more meaningful measures that cut across cancer diagnoses. These measures should assess patient-reported outcomes (PROs), clinical outcomes, safety, evaluation and management, and essential structures. The white paper proposes near-term action steps that providers, payers, patient advocates, and others can take to implement improvement strategies.

NPC hosted a webinar on Wednesday, April 26 to present the white paper findings. The webinar was moderated by Kimberly Westrich, VP, Health Services Research. Webinar presenters included Dr. Tom Valuck, Partner at Discern Heath, Dr. McClellan, Dr. Miller, and Dr. Alan Balch of the Patient Advocate Foundation.

If you would like to discuss strategies for improving oncology measurement, please contact Tom Valuck at tvaluck@discernhealth.com or David Blaisdell at dblaisdell@discernhealth.com.