MD Anderson guides intelligent redesign of cancer care delivery model

How best to implement key recommendations recently identified by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) for the delivery of high-quality cancer care is the focus of two peer-reviewed articles from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Published recently in Healthcare: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation and the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, the papers elaborate on recommendations in the September 2013 IOM report, Delivering High-Quality Cancer Care: Charting a New Course for a System in Crisis.

The papers support the ability to measure and improve national cancer care delivery systematically. Specifically, the papers' authors address two areas essential to improving the quality of cancer care in America, including the need to develop:

A learning information technology (IT) system for cancer that enables real-time data analysis from cancer patients in a variety of care settings;
and
A national quality reporting program for cancer care as a part of a learning health care system.

These needs embody key recommendations first brought to light in a 1999 IOM report on improving the quality of cancer care. Such intelligent systems provide patients and clinicians with the information and tools necessary to make well informed medical decisions, support quality measurement and improve care. With the nation's health care system undergoing rapid transformation precipitated by the Affordable Care Act, the widespread adoption of efforts that result in meaningful, patient-centric outcomes and costs of care are critical.

"It's time to pull back the curtain on cancer quality measurement efforts to date," said Thomas Feeley, M.D., director of MD Anderson's Institute for Cancer Care Innovation and an author on the papers. "Since the IOM recognized the need for a core set of quality measures to improve cancer care nearly 15 years ago, several organizations have made genuine attempts to fill these gaps. But their efforts lacked the breadth magnitude, coordination and sustainability to transform cancer care across the nation."

Potential leadership and management structure

In their analyses, Feeley and colleague, Tracy Spinks, project director of MD Anderson's Clinical Operations, call for federal oversight, ensuring the necessary level of leadership to direct, coordinate and fund nationwide quality efforts. The authors, who also served as contributors to the most recent IOM report, propose that this model would enforce key tasks for the intelligent redesign of cancer care delivery, among them:

Putting the Patient at the Center: Intelligent Redesign of the Cancer Care Delivery Model

Enlist the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the National Quality Forum and other professional organizations as key partners to align, unify and accelerate quality measurement efforts already underway.