Journal of oncology practice
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The Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI) is a quality measurement and improvement program designed to assess practice performance for various consensus-based and evidence-based measures. In this study, we evaluated differences in QOPI metrics met among patients with advanced solid cancer receiving routine oncologic care alone (routine care) compared with patients receiving integrated oncology and specialty-level palliative care (supportive care). ⋯ Integrating palliative care consultation with routine oncologic care improved pain management and end-of-life planning and care. Properly addressing pain and guiding advance care discussions require specialized skills. These data support the need for increased primary palliative care education for oncologists and further development of supportive oncology practices.
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Peer review of a proposed treatment plan is increasingly recognized as an important quality activity in radiation medicine. Although peer review has been emphasized in the curative setting, applying peer review for treatment plans that have palliative intent is receiving increased attention. This study reports peer review outcomes for a regional cancer center that applied routine interprofessional peer review as a standard practice for palliative radiotherapy. ⋯ Many complexities exist that are specific to palliative radiotherapy. Interprofessional peer review provides a forum for these complexities to be openly discussed and is an important activity to optimize the quality of care for patients with treatment plans that have palliative intent.
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Performance-based payments to oncology providers participating in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Oncology Care Model (OCM) are based, in part, on overall spending in 6-month episodes of care, including spending unrelated to oncology care. The amount of spending likely to occur outside of oncologists' purview is unknown. ⋯ Most spending in OCM-defined episodes was attributable to services related to cancer care, especially antineoplastic drug therapy. Inability to control nononcology spending may present challenges for practices participating in the OCM, however.