Cancer Centers of Excellence and Integrated Health Delivery System Perspectives

Conference Correspondent

In the October 27 session of the Association for Value-Based Cancer Care (AVBCC) 10th Annual Summit, moderated by William McGivney, PhD, Managing Principal at McGivney Global Advisors, a panel of experts discussed the significant role that Centers of Excellence (COEs) play in the delivery of cancer care.

Harlan Levine, MD, President of Strategy and Business Ventures at City of Hope, began the session by emphasizing that COEs need to be specialty specific. All of the panel members agreed that oncology is unique to other specialties.

“At the primary level, payers in the year 2020 have been highly effective in steering patients directly or through third-party affiliated programs. For a couple of reasons, they are less effective in oncology,” said Pat Basu, MD, MBA, President and CEO of Cancer Treatment Centers of America Global. Dr Basu explained that the dynamics of oncology and rate of change along with the emotional nature of the disease make Cancer COEs unique.

Other discussion topics during the session included biopharma technology and assumption of risk in COEs. Howard A. Burris, III, MD, FACP, FASCO, President and Chief Medical Officer at Sarah Cannon, took the opportunity to relate these topics to his experience at his center.

Lisa DeAngelis, MD, Physician-in-Chief and Chief Medical Officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said that she believes in the next 2 to 5 years, the future of Cancer COEs will be built on expansion in remote care, not just for initial diagnosis and treatment, but with ongoing input from community physicians who deliver the care.

Dr Levine said that he sees future COEs being responsible for leveraging data to support precision medicine across the entire network and helping non-COEs to compete more effectively.

Most of the panelists agree that with remote care and expansion, COEs can help to close gaps in health disparities.

If you haven’t registered for the AVBCC Summit, now is the time! You don’t want to miss out on this timely and insightful keynote session, or the 40-plus other webcasts featuring top experts from every area on the cancer care continuum.

Related Articles