Glenn Balasky Highlights Continued Value-Based Oncology Care Efforts With Private Payers

Even though there is a 1-year gap between the Oncology Care Model (OCM) and the Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM), there remain value-based oncology payment programs with private payers, said Glenn Balasky, executive director of Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers.

Transcript

How is Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers handling the 1-year delay between the end of the Oncology Care Model and the beginning of the Enhancing Oncology Model?

With the pause of the OCM program, we’re actually blessed as a practice at Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers to have a lot of ongoing programs with our private payers. Our navigators, social workers, data coordinators, we’re kind of redirecting/redeploying them to the private payer efforts that we have.

We also have got to continue some efforts. We’re doing HCC [Hierarchical Condition Category] coding, some other tracking of the Medicare patients. We’re probably going to keep that at a certain level of rhythm, even though we haven’t made a final determination on the EOM. It’s to prepare so that we don’t have to ramp quickly back up into the EOM, but ease into it when it does come about.

Are there any changes from OCM to EOM that you think will be the most challenging shift?

I think we’re well prepared to move into the EOM. It’s a less of a subset of patients that we have to deal with. It might mean some different levels of effort and some targeting. And then there are new things with the EOM that’s part of our job too, right now—it’s just be a student, to study and learn and figure out as the details of the EOM get revealed, there’s not only principles but how will those principles execute. That’s something that we have to kind of keep our eyes and ears open for.