OneOncology Leaders Highlight Value of Joining Forces

OneOncology has undergone considerable growth over the years, evolving into what is now a network of more than 1300 providers—featuring 650 physicians and advanced practice providers—that sees an annual growth rate of 50%.

Davey B. Daniel, MD | Image credit: LinkedIn

The organization was created to help oncology practices expand their services and deliver higher quality patient care, especially when insufficient facilities or resources impede their ability to do so, said Davey B. Daniel, MD, chief medical officer, OneOncology, one of the network’s presenters for its panel discussion during Patient-Centered Oncology Care. Daniel is based in Chattanooga with Tennessee Oncology, one of the network’s founding practices; the others are West Cancer Center & Research Institute, based in Memphis, Tennessee, and New York Cancer & Blood Specialists.

Emily Touloukian, DO | Image credit: Community Oncology Alliance

Why do practices join OneOncology? “We really saw the opportunity to grow, and not only grow our medical oncology service line, but to expand into new service lines… [W]e didn’t have the infrastructure to do that,” noted Emily Touloukian, DO, president and CEO, Coastal Cancer Center, when asked about her motivation to join the platform. Although OneOncology provides essential analytical and capital support, she said, the ability of the practice to retain its independence and local decision-making was truly the deciding factor.

Having a capital partner that can aid in a seamless transition for the practice’s patients has been invaluable, Touloukian said. “If you asked my patients, or you asked my employees, what’s the difference? What was the difference from day 1 to day 2? Well, nothing. They didn’t know the difference.

David Eagle, MD | Image credit: LinnkedIn

“To me, that was a successful transition, because it really proves that we do still have ownership of this, that nothing has really changed for our employee-facing and our patient-facing services, which was really rewarding to me.”

Daniel outlaid multiple initiatives to improve network practices, primarily centered around investments in precision medicine, including bringing on a molecular pathologist or research scientist to provide guidance. Furthermore, he foresees the integration of clinical decision support tools into electronic health records to facilitate the delivery of actionable patient-level insights during consultations. Value-based care and expanding community and researcher access remain priorities as they seek answers for how to best incorporate bispecific antibodies and efficient quality metrics into the network.

The network’s growth in the coming years will stem from identifying the practices in need of more stabilization, as well as lending a hand to hospital physicians looking to develop new practices to replace existing, failing systems. “If you think about it, people talk about this burden on patients…but we need to provide care closer and closer to communities. I would tell you that from a business and efficiency standpoint, hospital systems don’t always understand that but we understand our communities,” said Daniel.

Touloukian highlighted the opportunity that being part of OneOncology offered for her practice to open new service lines—such as radiation oncology, which occurred not long after her practice joined the platform.1 Not only was the support and transition unmatched, but Touloukian praised OneOncology for going the extra mile and helping her practice become trained in radiation oncology billing, and relevant policies and processes to remain compliant. “There’s no way I would have been able to start this service line without the infrastructure and the support that I received from OneOncology throughout this.”

She is also excited about their opportunities to implement a clinical trials program, to which Daniel added that 60 trials are set to open over the next 4 months in practices that have established research programs. He outlined some of their anticipated challenges, revolving around questions such as, “How do you train a new generation of doctors to do research?” “How do you have that infrastructure to get regulatory contracting?” and “How do we get better than the old systems — can we do centralized screening, centralized data entry?”

David Eagle, MD, chair of legislative affairs and advocacy for New York Cancer & Blood Specialists, who moderated this panel, stressed the importance of adequately serving new practices that join OneOncology, which are more likely to be smaller and have fewer connections than bigger practices. Daniel agreed and emphasized the importance of addressing the needs of small practices that serve communities outside the big cities, where treatment options, access, and resources can be more limited. Not only will patient care remain top of mind, but all speakers stressed the value of centralized information technology (IT) support, cybersecurity prevention methods, and marketing teams, which may not be as available for smaller-scale facilities.

“You hear about all these different hacking attacks and the ransomware stuff, and it really kind of freaks me out. And so, I needed somebody to come in and look at this and say, ‘Are we up to date? Can we do more to protect our company?’ And that’s one of the things that the OneOncology IT team was able to help us do,” Touloukian said.

She recalled the severe data breach experienced by Change Healthcare earlier this year, which had a significant impact on private practices’ ability to pay their employees. As other practices were still recovering from the incident, Touloukian said her practice was not burdened because OneOncology absorbed the financial blow so member practices did not have to carry unpaid bills while waiting for the payment issues to be resolved.

The Navigating Cancer platform is another development set to expand the capabilities of OneOncology and the quality of care throughout the network after being acquired in September.2 It acts as a patient portal that provides bidirectional communication, patient-directed education, and lab results. It is also a form of care management including nurse navigation tools, triage systems, and ticketing to track, tackle, and resolve patients’ issues, additionally complimented by patient surveys (such as electronic patient-reported outcomes). “Also, it’s great that it’s sort of a one-stop shop. [Patients] don’t have to log on to multiple different platforms; it’s very user-friendly,” Touloukian added.

“We want to be the biggest research, community-based research program in the country,” Daniel continued as he reviewed OneOncology’s research goals.

Top of mind is ensuring that all patients have access to state-of-the-art clinical trials close to where they live. Achieving these goals will require dedicated efforts to reduce barriers physicians encounter for finding the right trial for their patient, as well as continued advocacy for patient education to make sure they understand the opportunities and trials available to them, and which are best for them.

References
1. Munz K. OneOncology and Coastal Cancer Center acquire new radiation oncology centers. AJMC. February 7, 2024. Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.ajmc.com/view/oneoncology-and-coastal-cancer-center-acquire-new-radiation-oncology-centers
2. Hoffman E. Navigating Cancer accelerates investments to enhance care management platform for providers and patients. OneOncology. September 3, 2024. Accessed September 20, 2024. https://www.oneoncology.com/blog/navigating-cancer-accelerates-investments-to-enhance-care-management-platform-for-providers-and-patients/