Don’t miss Abt’s researchers at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Quality Care Symposium in Boston. The conference brings together new research and insights for oncology clinical care teams, including the latest methods for measuring patient and caregiver experiences.
Presentations:
Do OCM-related increases in screening for depression and pain improve patient-reported symptoms?
Presenter: Sean McClellan, Ph.D.
Authors: Sean McClellan, Ph.D. and Matthew Trombley, Ph.D., Abt Global; Nancy Keating, MD MPH, Harvard Medical School; Gabriel A. Brooks, MD, MPH, Dartmouth Cancer Center; Colleen Kummet, Ph.D. MS, GDIT
Has the Oncology Care Model improved quality of oncology care?
Authors: Nancy Keating, MD MPH and Mary Beth Landrum, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School; Gabriel A. Brooks, MD MPH, Dartmouth Cancer Center; Sean McClellan, Ph.D. and Matthew Trombley, Ph.D., Abt Global; Colleen Kummet, Ph.D. MS and Van Doren Hsu, GDIT.
Additional Resources
Promoting Equity in Implementation and Quality Improvement Procurements
In this paper, Abt Global describes five key design components to successfully promote equity through government-funded procurements.
Achieving Health Equity Takes More Than Data
Health equity isn’t just about data, policy, or DEIA goals, it’s about combining solutions to health, housing, climate, and more with those most impacted.
Analyzing If An Oncology Care Model Will Improve Care and Lower Costs
Cancer strikes 1.6 million Americans each year. It imposes huge costs: heartache, death, and an estimated $263.8 billion in medical care and lost productivity in 2010, the most recent data available. Cancer care is complex and improving it faces a legal…
Evaluating ACOs and Rural Healthcare for CMS
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) developed the ACO Investment Model (AIM) to improve health care delivery in rural and underserved areas. AIM provided up-front payments to ACOs participating in Medicare’s Shared Savings Program (SSP)…
Tackling Health Disparities—and Equity—in Oncology
This blog outlines the need for, approaches to, and benefits of improved equity in oncology, and Abt’s approach to providing it.
How to Evaluate the Quality and Cost of Cancer Care? Teamwork
Physically, emotionally, and financially, cancer is tough on patients and their families. Half of newly diagnosed cancer patients are over age 65, making Medicare the single largest payer of oncology care in the United States. Through its oncology care model (OCM), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Center for Innovation (CMMI) is looking for ways to reduce the financial costs to Medicare while reducing burdens for beneficiaries and their families by enhancing:Patient navigation and education,Care coordination among providers,Adherence to nationally recognized clinical guidelines, andEnd of life care.Abt is in our fourth year leading an evaluation of OCM. We’re trying to determine if the model reduces costs to Medicare, and improves the cancer patient’s experience.To properly evaluate OCM, we use a variety of data to assess a broad range of outcomes: patient care experiences, clinician perceptions, utilization and cost of health services, and clinical outcomes. Abt has the expertise to cover several of these areas, but it takes integrated, comprehensive partnerships for an evaluation of this scope, which must address such diverse program outcomes while keeping all of the pieces moving. That’s why we assembled a team of partners with the big data, economic, and clinical expertise to evaluate this complex program.Our PartnersTo start, we needed data, and lots of it. GDIT manages CMMI’s big data warehouse, which is used for program implementation and evaluations. GDIT’s experience and deep understanding of Medicare administrative data, gives them the insight to extract and assemble the necessary data from claims, Medicare beneficiary eligibility files, provider service files, and other related sources. They create beneficiary-, episode-, and provider-level files every quarter, which our team uses for evaluation analyses.Of course, one of the vital metrics for determining the success of OCM is whether it changes utilization patterns and reduces Medicare costs. The Lewin Group is leading the cost and use analysis. They’re answering questions such as “Did the use of services change under OCM?” “Did Medicare save money?” “Where in the process did savings (or losses) occur?”To understand the clinical impacts of OCM, we invited Dr. Nancy Keating and her colleagues from Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Policy to join our team, along with Dr. Gabriel Brooks, a medical oncologist from Dartmouth. They’re determining if clinicians are adhering to national clinical guidelines, whether treatment patterns are changing to emphasize high-value care, and whether there are any deleterious consequences.In addition to managing this team, Abt is surveying cancer patients and family members about their care experiences, surveying clinicians about their perspectives and experiences, and conducting dozens of in-depth case studies to understand how care delivery is changing. We’re also using our expertise in hospice and palliative care to measure improvements in care at the end of life.Changing cancer care delivery to foster coordination and efficiency takes time, and the data thus far reflect the earliest years of OCM. Our team is still analyzing data and measuring OCM’s impact. We look forward to sharing a full report—the fruit of our collective labors—reflecting the first two years of OCM later this year.