Incremental Improvements Are Not Enough
Two years ago, the world lost an extraordinary person, my dear friend Dr. Brent Whitworth. He was a few days shy of his 42nd birthday when he learned of his diagnosis – stage IV kidney cancer – and he was devastated. He had surgery at a major cancer hospital and ...
Guest Post: Study Reports Nurse Navigators Make a Difference
As a cancer survivor and nurse educator, I am always interested in how we can advocate for the care of cancer patients and recommend policy changes. Recently, I had the occasion to experience the impact a nurse navigator can have in assisting patients. Patient navigation is a program designed to ...
WCOE: “Why I Hope to Die at 75” and a New IOM Report on Quality and End of Life Preferences
What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) Each week, we take a closer look at the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. Are we finally ready to address the repeated recommendations in these series of reports and to make it possible for our healthcare system, providers of care, and ...
NCCS Offers Comments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation on their proposed Oncology Care Model
Click here to view all of NCCS' policy comments. Recently, NCCS submitted comments to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation on its proposed Oncology Care Model (OCM), an episode-based payment model that emphasizes care planning and coordination and cancer care system transformation. The OCM represents an important step forward ...
WCOE: Dr. Susan Love Discusses the Pros and Cons of BRCA Screening
What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) Each week, we take a closer look at the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. There are as many questions as there are differences of opinion about what constitutes the best evidence when it comes to appropriate cancer screening and then appropriate ...
NCCS and CLC Policy Comments: 2015 Physician Fee Schedule
Recently, NCCS joined colleagues in the Cancer Leadership Council (CLC) in submitting comments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on the 2015 Physician Fee Schedule, which governs payments to physicians for services provided to Medicare patients. NCCS and the CLC have applauded efforts by CMS to strengthen ...
WCOE: Challenges of Care Coordination in a Fragmented Health Care System
What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) Each week, we take a closer look at the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. Several articles caught our eye this week about the complexities of our reimbursement system and the lack of incentives in our current system for the kind of ...
Focus on the Care Video: Emily Lee Discusses Emerging Payment Models in Cancer Care
Emily Lee, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress (CAP), spoke to us at the NCCS Cancer Policy Roundtable in April of 2014. Lee was a speaker on a panel titled "Bundles or Episodes of Care: Are These Payment Models Workable for Cancer Care?" which discussed the development ...
The Difficult Question of When to Stop Treatment
Yesterday, I stumbled across the Twitter chat #whentostop, hosted by the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS), addressing one of the most difficult questions anyone with cancer has to face: when is it time to stop treatment? I am new to Twitter chats, though I have lurked during the <a href="https://hcldr.wordpress.com/">Healthcare Leader (#hcldr) and the Breast Cancer Social ...
Addressing the Gaps in Treatment Planning and Coordination with the PACT Act (H.R. 2477)
Recently we were reminded of the importance of the Planning Actively for Cancer Treatment (PACT) Act, H.R. 2477 as we participated in the Lymphoma Research Foundation’s (LRF) Lymphoma Education and Advocacy Partners (LEAP) webinar focused on survivorship and care coordination. NCCS has identified the PACT Act as one of our ...
