I recently had the honor of representing the Society at the ASCO co-hosted 2012 Cancer Center Business Summit, titled “Transitioning to Value Based Oncology: Strategies to Survive and Thrive.” This unique meeting brought together multiple stakeholders to share perspectives on the current state and future direction of oncology. Appropriately, the agenda reflected the diversity of topics and models of major interest to the oncology community, including presentations on a benchmarking study of oncology practices, payer and provider initiative panels on innovative payment models, organizational strategies for future success, and building the patient-centered medical home. We also listened to a great presentation on end-of-life care, advanced-care planning, living life well, and the “journey of life” (which I will address in a future blog post).

What we learned at the summit emphasized the significant challenges we face, but also left room for hope. Practices are feeling the squeeze, but they are adapting. The future of community cancer care remains in flux, but like others present at the meeting, I left the meeting feeling excited about our field and the future of oncology. Issues such as fragmentation, cost, and efficiency are being recognized and addressed. During our discussions, I heard many terms related to practice models—blending, surviving, collaborating, thriving, dynamic, pathways, volatile, disruptive, care management, trust, and urgency. But the most important term I heard was “proactive,” which captured the essence of the meeting and why we carved out time to attend.

All of the speakers emphasized what we all know and live with every day—it’s all about the patient. We want to continue building those relationships with our patients as they enter the most important journey of their life and make that journey as good as it can possibly be. In order for that to happen, we as physicians need to be leaders in deciding our own fate and, in the process, the fate of our patients.

Patients want community oncology practices to thrive because their satisfaction is higher when they can stay close to home in a user-friendly environment; payers want community practices to survive because costs are less; and community physicians want to survive in some form because it provides control, autonomy, and more personal satisfaction. In order to achieve these, we discussed many different solutions, including different forms of Accountable Care Organization involvement, multispecialty groups, oncology medical homes, oncology “supergroups,” state-wide oncology programs, innovation grants for oncology initiatives, and hospital employment or practices directing cancer-service lines for a hospital.

In order for patients to continue to have access to high-quality care close to their homes and families, it is critical that community oncology not only survive, but thrive. We all love medicine and look back on the idealistic goals we had when we entered the field. We want to preserve those goals for our future and continue with the cognitive and humanistic part of what we do.