Our top content coverage from the spring Association of Cancer Care Centers (ACCC) 51st Annual Meeting & Cancer Center Business Summit included coverage on challenges in cancer care, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to find lung cancer in its early stages, and whether health care’s future success may be linked to a culture of happiness.
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5. The Weapons of Getting Paid: Bringing Data, Technology, and Advocacy to the Battle
Strategies for addressing prior authorizations and being shortchanged on contracts, common complaints found in the space, was the topic of discussion during this panel. Speakers suggested that using payer scorecards and key performance indicators can help to identify problem payers, and AI can be used to develop performance metrics in the future. Speakers also discussed the difficulty in addressing pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), who act as middlemen for the pricing of drugs and control 80% of the market. PBMs have been known to restrict formularies and dictate where a prescription is filled, which harms rural and underserved areas in the US. PBM reform is a high priority to reduce the costs of drugs nationwide.
4. Using AI to Screen for Cancers Now May Boost Survival Down the Road
In this video interview, Douglas Flora, MD, FACCC, the executive medical director of oncology services at St. Elizabeth Healthcare and editor-in-chief of AI in Precision Oncology, spoke about how he determines what makes an AI tool beneficial for use in cancer care. Flora emphasized that they evaluate the usefulness of AI as it pertains to the patients, figuring out if it would be useful for detecting cancer earlier. They also examine whether the tool will have a return on investment by reducing the number of patients who need to go to the emergency room. Flora envisions that AI can work as a personal helper for patients to help guide them toward care that is most beneficial to them.
3. Is a “Culture of Happiness” Key to Health Care’s Future Success?
Nick Webb, a medical technologist and inventor, gave his keynote address at the ACCC conference, which focused on a “culture of happiness” as a method of addressing the workforce and patients in the future. Despite the rise in AI, Webb believed that the best delivery models would offer a human experience, including wider consumer choices, asynchronous shopping times, and eliminating unproductive stretches in the waiting room. He also stated that AI and other devices can help to save time or money and improve experience. He specifically highlighted multimodal AI, which integrates different types of data with video, audio, images, and other forms of media, as useful in this area.
2. Use of AI Lets Health System Find Lung Cancer at Early Stages
Practice improvements can be undertaken with the use of AI and business intelligence solutions, according to Amie J. Miller, MSn, APRN, AOCNP, ACHPN, CTTS. Miller works in the Lung Cancer Early Detection and Prevention Program, which follows up on pulmonary nodules that AI has detected in scans, a means by which AI may help in detecting lung cancer before it progresses. Increasing this level of screening is vital to reducing the number of cancer deaths and is primarily linked to making screening more accessible to more of the population. Because of low rates of screening, 44% of all lung cancers are diagnosed at a later stage. Educating on who is eligible for lung cancer screening and integrating AI into screening processes has helped improve screening in some cases.
1. Barrett and Zon: Lessons in Leadership, Challenges in Cancer Care
Nadine Barrett, PhD, MS, MPH, former president of ACCC, and Robin Zon, MD, FACP, FASCO, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, sat down for a Q&A with the audience to discuss lessons in leadership and the future of cancer care. Barrett discussed building a team around her that can both do the job and also complement each other, with team members that possess unique traits that the rest of the team lacks, whether it be in tactical skills or in emotional intelligence. Both women spoke about having to carve their own path, as they were the first in their families to go through graduate school and, in Zon’s case, among the few women who went to college at all. Both ended with a call to action to keep the fight against cancer going, noting that it will require a team of experts to overcome.
