A session at the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) 48^th Annual Meeting and Cancer Center Business Summit brought together a panel of experts showcasing products and services that improve clinical making or patient support.

Ed Rodgers, Network Development Director, Clinical Pathways, Elsevier/Clinical Path, discussed ClinicalPath, which embeds oncology pathways into clinical workflow, providing support for providers to make personalized treatment decisions for patients. ClinicalPath also delivers clinical trial support before the standard of care to help clinicians operate a more efficient cancer research program.

Mr Rodgers said that this platform “accelerates the ability to put patients into studies just by just heightening awareness,” adding, “It helps with business intelligence, informing portfolio decisions, and it optimizes access to the right studies and the ‘just in time component.”

“Many [patients] don’t have access to a clinical study that fits their type of disease” or “the practices that are looking at them don’t know which studies to open up because they might not have enough wherewithal to know what patient populations they’re seeing.”

Peter Webner, General Manager, Breast Oncology, GE Healthcare, discussed Cerianna (F18-Fluoroestradiol), a diagnostic tool to measure whole body tumor ER expression in patients with metastatic lesions.

Cerianna is an estrogen analog radioactive agent, allowing it to be detected in patients receiving positron emission tomography (PET) scans.

“[Cerianna] gives a sense of what the tumor really is, where it is, allows us to make more informed decisions based on the patient’s pathology,” said Mr Webner.

One caveat is that patients cannot use Cerianna if they’ve been on a select list of drugs for a certain period of time.

Shawn Huda, Director of Product, Flatiron Health, and Rebecca Maniago PharmD, Associate Director, Flatiron Health discussed Flatiron Assist, a clinical decision support tool for oncologists to reduce administrative burdens, and organize and leverage data to assure quality care for patients.

Flatiron Assist was shaped by industry dynamics and the breadth of treatment options that are available to patients with cancer, meeting generalist oncologists’ need for guidance in the latest available treatment options.

The guidance provided through the Flatiron Assist is backed by NCCN and NCCN Categories of Preference, but the tool also allows for practices and organizations to add their own preferences and create their own pathways.

Dr Maniago demonstrated the tool, launching Flatiron Assist directly through an example-patient’s chart in their EHR (electronic health record). Flatiron Assist listed the patient-specific information and the regimens that would be appropriate within the practice where the patient is being treated. The tool offers a feature that can narrow down regimen options according to “NCCN Preferred” or “Practice Preferred.”

“We have a supplemental tool that allows practices to build their own pathways on top of the NCCN guidelines,“ Dr Maniago noted.

Once a regimen is selected for the patient, the provider is asked to attest why the chosen regimen is concordant. All treatment options, listed as “preferred” or not, can be ordered, but they require a reason for ordering to be placed into the system (financial, etc).

The depth of data and recording at each step can be helpful for billing staff, due to payers requiring similar information, leaving little room for misinterpretation of clinical concepts, and relieving that administrative burden.

Amila Patel, PharmD, Chief Clinical Officer, Navigating Cancer discussed the OCM Program, and how patient-reported outcome measure  can be used as a tool for providers seeking new revenue-generating opportunities.

Delivering better at-home value-based care for patients is at the forefront of Dr Patel and teams’ mission. Dr Patel believes that “financial incentives are misaligned” in oncology practice. Patients have been getting valuable services, but practices are not seeing cost-savings.

”Without the ability to capture these financial incentives,” says Dr Patel, “practices will have to make really tough decisions about whether they can offer these services which are really important for patient care.”

Clinics have had to “stack up” their resources, and the growing number of patients and the limited number of staff leads Dr Patel to believe that this is not a scalable solution.

Dr Patel notes that patients are ending up in the ED and getting hospitalized unnecessarily, mostly due to symptom management being reactive, generic, and untimely. 

These drawbacks in the current clinical climate brought Dr Patel and colleagues to bring a “clinic-at-home digital experience to patients.”

The platform provides patient education materials, allows for the care team to automate more of the routine interactions that are occurring on a day-to-day basis, gives oral adherence reminders, and provides patients with direct access to contact with their care team.

These features provide more immediacy when it comes to reporting and dealing with issues at home, reducing the rate of unnecessary hospitalizations.

The interactions and care team activities recorded through this platform allow for maximum reimbursement, and shift the financial incentives back to patient-centered care.

Tanya Park, Director of Innovation Solutions, Cardinal Health, discussed Decision Path, discussed the patient side of practices achieving success in value-based reimbursement. Ms Park and her team looked at the financial stressors that patients with cancer face and wanted to find a way to reduce those stressors from the clinical aspects of care, and the cost aspect.

The Decision Path platform automatically offers lower-cost options like biosimilars, in an effort to mitigate financial toxicity for patients, assists in treating patients before an adverse event occurs, visualizes the cost of an episode, and provides general EHR from an all-in-one perspective