Embracing EOM, Enhancing Collaboration and Cost Management: Dr Kirollos Hanna

In this interview with The American Journal of Managed Care®(AJMC®), Kirollos Hanna, PharmD, BCPS, BCOP, FACCC, director of pharmacy at Minnesota Oncology speaks to his practice’s longstanding focus on value-based care, payer collaboration and more. As Hanna explains, these elements positioned them for a seamless transition into the Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM), the follow-up model to the Oncology Care Model (OCM). Working within this model has provided a great framework that continually fosters the kinds of collaborative communication necessary to deliver quality care.

These topics and more were explored at an Institute for Value-Based Care® event cohosted by AJMC and Minnesota Oncology.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Transcript

There was a small number of practices that joined EOM compared with OCM. Minnesota Oncology wasn’t part of OCM, can you explain why the practice decided to join EOM?

When we look at value-based delivery, my practice within Minnesota Oncology was really driven to be part of the Enhancing Oncology Model when CMS kind of came out with this particular model. The reason why it was very attractive to us is, prior to this and preceding all of this, we have always been in conversations with local payers, national payers, and various entities around value-based care delivery. We have partnerships with local organizations under a value-based enterprise type of model, we have very strong relationships with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota in terms of being able to demonstrate, you know, our cost of care can be lower without taking away from the outcomes—the clinical benefit—of our patients. So, EOM really to us was almost a no brainer, right?

We knew that drug costs are driving up health care spend. So Medicare came and said, “Hey, you know what that's going to be 70% of this analysis, this EOM analysis in these top 7 disease states. And what could you do to help show that you can reduce the total cost of care around certain drugs?” So that's where we navigate things like biosimilars, be heavy adopters of biosimilars as soon as they're coming to market and evaluating those. Looking at our pathways. Our pathways take into consideration total cost of care and where there could be opportunities to contain cost if the clinical profile of particular regimens don't really differ significantly, or any, by any means. And then other things like things like social determinants of health.

All of these things have been things that we've historically worked on. So, it was really nice to see this EOM model come out; and it tied a lot of factors that we have maybe worked on in the past or currently are working on with multiple payers and other stakeholder groups. EOM for us was just an opportunity to just continue to demonstrate that value and show that value. And also, we were fortunate in terms of there were multiple other US Oncology practices part of EOM as well.

It takes a village, is what I like to say. So, while I might be doing something here in Minnesota that's unique to my EOM patient population, I can reach out to someone in Texas, I can reach out to someone in Denver and say, “Hey, what are you guys doing that's unique or what are you guys doing that maybe is not working for your patients?” And we have a lot of great minds from a physician lens, from a managed care lens, from a pharmacy lens as we navigate this and just come up with different opportunities and interventions.