Reducing Cost of Cancer Care Through Novel Therapy Adjustment With Erica Feinberg, PharmD

Oncology Data Advisor: Welcome to Oncology Data Advisor. Today, we're here at the ASCO Annual Meeting, and I'm joined by Erica Feinberg. Thanks so much for coming on today.

Erica Feinberg, PharmD, BCPS: Thank you so much.

Oncology Data Advisor: Would you like to introduce yourself and what your work focuses on?

Dr. Feinberg: Yes. My name is Erica Feinberg. I'm a Pharmacist working with The US Oncology Network in the Data Analytics Team. My poster focuses on novel therapy adjustments with the OCM and EOM model. So, we looked at the change that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) made to the EOM model to change novel therapy to a by-cancer type instead of population-type calculation. And we saw that more of the practices would've received the novel therapy adjustment if they had done it that way in OCM, and that a lot of the cancers that are being included in EOM are the ones that need those novel therapy adjustments and are using more of those novel therapies.

Oncology Data Advisor: Great. So, for your poster about the novel therapy adjustment, just for background, what is a novel therapy adjustment and when are they implemented?

Dr. Feinberg: A novel therapy adjustment is an adjustment to the benchmarking price for the savings in total cost-of-care. So, when you enter the EOM model, you agree to reduce your total cost-of-care, and if you use more novel therapy medications than non-EOM practices, CMS adds an adjuster so that the program isn't inhibiting the use of new novel therapies.

Oncology Data Advisor: What did you find when you were studying the impact of moving from a population-based novel therapy adjustment to a cancer-type–based?

Dr. Feinberg: We saw that more of our practices would receive the novel therapy adjustment overall. We saw that the cancer types that were reduced in EOM—so instead of all the cancers, there are only seven—we saw that those seven are the most likely to have novel therapies. I think there were three that we called out that were even more, and that more of the practices were to receive that.

Oncology Data Advisor: What do you foresee in the future for improving novel therapy risk adjustments?

Dr. Feinberg: I think this is a great change, and with these models, we don't want to be reducing the use of these novel therapies. That's not the goal of this program. The goal of the program is to treat patients better and at better costs. So, changing this is really going to help the practices and make them more involved with these models. It really is a great method for this value-based care program, definitely.

Oncology Data Advisor: One last question I'll ask you is, since the theme of ASCO this year is "Partnering With Patients," how does this project fit into that?

Dr. Feinberg: I think one of the key things with oncology patients is that oncology standard-of-treatment is really new therapies and research, so this really makes sure that all patients can get those novel therapies so that no one's being excluded. That's one of the keys that helps.

Oncology Data Advisor: Great, it was really interesting to hear about. Thank you so much for stopping by.

Dr. Feinberg: Thank you for having me.

About Dr. Feinberg

Eric Feinberg, PharmD, BCPS, is a Senior Clinical Data Analyst at The US Oncology Network in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Transcript edited for clarity. Any views expressed above are the speaker's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Oncology Data Advisor.