Working Together to Provide Quality Care

Douglas W. Blayney, MD 2009-2010 ASCO President

“Advancing Quality through Innovation” is the theme around which we are building the 2010 Annual Meeting, and which will guide our Society’s work in the coming year. This phrase captures much of what we do in our professional lives: We start from a sound base of quality cancer care and 46 years of experience as a professional Society. Basic, translational, and clinical research results enhance this care; our clinical practice is enhanced by ASCO’s efforts to assist us in measuring the quality of the care we provide; and constant innovation has resulted in sustained drops in the cancer death rates during the last eight years.

Advancing quality is one of ASCO’s signature programs. The Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI^®), developed under the leadership of Joseph V. Simone, MD, is a unique, growing, voluntary program that reaches into both community and academic practices. This is the only wide-ranging quality measurement tool that is oncologist-generated. Measurements can be made during defined periods twice each year and include core domains of care, disease-specific domains, and process-of-care domains. QOPI continues to grow as a self-assessment and benchmarking tool. As of the latest measurement round, more than 400 practices were registered participants and more than 12,000 patient charts were measured. New this year is a certification program that will recognize practices for their quality enhancement efforts and allow reduced regular chart abstraction efforts, and concentration improvement of the structural attributes of their operation (For more information about QOPI Certification click HERE.)

Innovation leading to better care and treatment of patients with cancer is a feature of the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) and the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP). Under the leadership of Editor in Chief Daniel G. Haller, MD, JCO has become the highest impact factor general oncology journal. (Impact factor is a measure of how often articles in a journal are cited by other publications). The print version of both Journals will be enhanced by a growing variety of online and multimedia offerings. We are committed to delivering timely and appropriate information to where you deliver patient care, and to the most convenient learning venues (in your office, at your study at home, in your car, at the airport, or wherever you prefer to learn about the newest and best ways to care for patients). (For more information about the JCO impact factor and online presence, click HERE.)

Our Annual Meeting remains the premier oncology scientific and educational meeting. Planning for the 2010 meeting in Chicago has already begun, and we will continue to present practice-changing results from clinical and translational studies performed around the world. The best, most clinically relevant abstracts from this meeting will continue to be reviewed at our Best of ASCO® meetings in the United States and abroad, directed toward clinicians who are unable to attend the Annual Meeting in Chicago. Our popular thematic symposia, focusing on breast cancer, gastrointestinal malignancies, genitourinary malignancies, and biomarkers will continue, and will focus on those of us whose professional efforts are concentrated in these fields. The educational and scientific information presented is in most cases available in print, in our popular Virtual Meeting web-based format, and in a variety of other electronic platforms.

Quality cancer care and innovation will not be possible unless we pay attention to the proposals for change in the organization and financing of our health care system. ASCO is committed to improving access to oncologists for our current and future patients, to maintaining the primacy of the oncologist–physician relationship in individual care decisions, ensuring that any system-wide changes are evidence-based, and allowing oncologists the freedom to participate (or not participate) in any payment schemes based on their own rational business decisions. ASCO is also committed to addressing, in a meaningful way, the cost–value calculus in oncology care. We are using ASCO’s well-developed policy apparatus to influence national and state legislative and regulatory efforts on these issues.

We have a lot on our plate this year. I look forward to renewing old friendships and making new friends as we continue to move our field forward together.