The 2025 Community Oncology Conference empowered attendees with insights on advocacy, innovation, and practical strategies for enhancing community cancer care.
The dual goals of the 2025 Community Oncology Conference, hosted by the Community Oncology Alliance (COA), united advocacy and empowerment in a high-impact, 2-day meeting in Orlando on April 29 and 30. With 36 sessions spanning 4 tracks and general presentations, the agenda featured 93 expert speakers committed to empowering patients and providers with the latest insights to improve community oncology care.
Discussion explored the pressing challenges and innovations shaping independent community oncology today—from policy shifts and value-based care models to the integration of cutting-edge technologies and workforce sustainability. With an emphasis on practical strategies and real-world application, the expertise shared at the meeting reinforced COA’s mission to protect access to quality, affordable cancer care close to home.
Led by current COA President Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, FASCO, Texas Oncology, the cochairs for this year’s conference were Johnetta Blakely, MD, MS, MMHC, Tennessee Oncology; Moshe Chasky, MD, FACP, Alliance Cancer Specialists; Fred Divers, MD, American Oncology Network; Kathy Oubre, MS, Pontchartrain Cancer Center; Alti Rahman, MHA/MBA, CSSBB, American Oncology Network; and Emily Touloukian, DO, Coastal Cancer Center.
As with last year’s meeting, which came on the heels of the crippling Change Healthcare cyberattack, marking an intense period of upheaval for prior authorization, claims, and payment processes against a backdrop marked by much disruption and confusion across the health care continuum, the 2025 meeting kicked off just as the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term were coming to a close; his 100th day in office was April 30.
To learn more about several of the key topics discussed at this year's meeting, please check out this additional coverage:
Community Oncology Reacts to Trump's Drug Pricing Executive Order
Patient Navigation Is Nonnegotiable in Cancer Care
There have been sweeping policy changes; confirmations of often controversial new heads of CMS, FDA, HHS, and the National Institutes of Health; mass layoffs (and some rehirings) across government agencies; steep funding cuts; and a proposed $880 billion cut to Medicaid funding that so far has only been passed by the House. The agenda for at least 1 panel discussion underwent a complete change following the April 15 executive order on drug pricing.
The meeting included the return of the Advocacy Track (its 11th year!), focusing on grassroots engagement, for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic, joining the Business, Clinical, and Pharmacy tracks.
Across both days, several in-common themes were apparent: from innovation and artificial intelligence (AI), to clinical advancements and precision medicine, to strength in community partnership, to resilience and scientific purpose, to applying actionable insights with a multidisciplinary focus.
The future of community oncology was clearly on the minds of everyone who attended, participated, shared knowledge, and networked over both days. Chasky, in his opening address, championed the advantages of being an independent community oncology practice, underscoring COA’s critical role in advocating for its community of patients and practitioners and speaking to the power of community support.
Moshe Chasky, MD, FACP | Image Credit: © Alliance Cancer Specialists
“The success of independent practices are due to our devotion to the patient and not the bottom line,” he said. “If we want to nurture these successes and create these opportunities for all patients, it is our job to empower ourselves as advocates for Independent Community Oncology.”
His call to action was to urge attendees to continue to champion their practices in light of evolving industry pressures, to “get a seat at the table where decisions are made.” Presentations on this day covered advocacy at the federal, state, and local levels; growing clinical trial programs; successfully cultivating relationships between community practices and academic medicine centers; managing treatment challenges for several cancer types (eg, acute myeloid leukemia and hormone receptor–positive breast cancer); radiopharmaceutical therapies; insurance education; payer contracting; and chimeric antigen receptor T-cell treatment.
Day 2 opened energized after the standing-room-only attendance that permeated several of the Advocacy Track sessions, according to Touloukian.
Emily Touloukian, DO | Image Credit: © Coastal Cancer Center
“Something that I think a lot of us may not think about is that we have this high-quality, low-cost, wonderful health care opportunity for our cancer patients, and how do we bring that to them more readily,” she said. “Well, let’s talk to payers, make preferred contracts, talk to employers, and really sort of promote this great venue that we have to take care of cancer patients.”
Presentations on day 2 focused on AI in oncology, health care policy, the return on investment from screening programs, cannabis and cancer care, examining the role of Janus kinase inhibitors in myelofibrosis, implementing mental health programs at your practice, pharmacy benefit manager–related challenges, the Inflation Reduction Act, and leadership and team building in oncology.
The American Journal of Managed Care® also sat down with several top thought leaders to learn even more about circulating tumor DNA, the future of value-based care models, AI in oncology, and patient navigation. Click below for these interviews:
Telepsychiatry Services Cut Hospitalization Rates Without Raising Overall Costs
May 5th 2025Timely outpatient telepsychiatry care for Medicaid enrollees was associated with lower hospitalization rates and comparable overall costs, supporting its potential role in value-based care models.
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New Research Challenges Assumptions About Hospital-Physician Integration, Medicare Patient Mix
April 22nd 2025On this episode of Managed Care Cast, Brady Post, PhD, lead author of a study published in the April 2025 issue of The American Journal of Managed Care®, challenges the claim that hospital-employed physicians serve a more complex patient mix.
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Managed Care Reflections: A Q&A With John Michael O’Brien, PharmD, MPH
May 5th 2025To mark the 30th anniversary of The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), each issue in 2025 includes reflections from a thought leader on what has changed over the past 3 decades and what’s next for managed care. The May issue features a conversation with John Michael O’Brien, PharmD, MPH, a member of AJMC’s editorial board and the president and CEO of the National Pharmaceutical Council. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
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Personalized Care Key as Tirzepatide Use Expands Rapidly
April 15th 2025Using commercial insurance claims data and the US launch of tirzepatide as their dividing point, John Ostrominski, MD, Harvard Medical School, and his team studied trends in the use of both glucose-lowering and weight-lowering medications, comparing outcomes between adults with and without type 2 diabetes.
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Community Oncology Reacts to Trump's Drug Pricing Executive Order
May 2nd 2025An executive order signed on Tuesday, March 15, necessitated a change in plans for this panel discussion from the 2025 Community Oncology Conference, with the assembled experts, moderated by Ted Okon, MBA, executive director of the Community Oncology Alliance, speaking to how the order would reverberate across the community oncology space.
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