How to endure COVID-19 and strategically develop a best-in-class cancer center

Cancer centers are essential to the diagnosis and treatment of this deadly disease. These care sites are not only vital to the well-being of cancer patients, but to the success of their overall organizations. Cancer centers are typically a key financial contributor to a health system’s bottom line and often draw in significant philanthropic support. During an Aug. 25 virtual event panel sponsored by ECG Management Consultants and hosted by Becker’s Hospital Review, four experts from ECG discussed the importance of cancer services, the core pillars to growing a cancer program and the ways the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted cancer centers. 

The speakers were: 

• Jessica Turgon, Principal, ECG Management Consultants 
• Matt Sturm, Principal, ECG Management Consultants
• Meagan O’Neill, Senior Manager, ECG Management Consultants 
• Lili Hay, Manager, ECG Management Consultants

Five key takeaways from their discussion:

1. The multidisciplinary nature of cancer care makes it a unique and complex segment of the U.S. healthcare system. ECG considers breast, lung, prostate and colorectal cancers to be the “big four” in terms of the highest volume cancers that community cancer centers treat. Because cancer patients interact with both oncology and nononcology specialists, it’s critical to have coordinated care across multiple specialties. To be a best-in-class cancer center, it’s also critical to differentiate your program from others. Depending on the market dynamics, cancer centers can differentiate themselves by deploying various strategies — having a top-notch team of subspecialized physicians, more access to research and clinical trials, or a programmatic focus around quality improvement.
2. Oncology is typically one of the 5 service lines that drive performance for a health system, but economic value isn’t uniformly distributed across the various services provided to cancer patients. The higher-margin services such as radiation therapy, chemotherapy and surgery largely fund the rest of the cancer program. Services such as evaluation and management visits can actually lose money for the program, so being a best-in-class cancer program requires a wide range of capabilities. Supportive care services — things like financial counselors, nutritionists and social workers — often cost more than they bring in, but are critical to provide comprehensive cancer care.
    
3. Some oncology providers saw as much as a 45% decline in outpatient visits during March and April due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cancer centers, just like healthcare in general, have had to learn how to adapt to an unprecedented public health crisis and figure out how to continue providing care while minimizing the risk of viral transmission. Through a recent survey with some of the nation’s leading cancer centers, ECG heard programs describe new ‘pods’ they’ve created to isolate patients with potential COVID-19 exposure. Some centers have also encouraged patients to get their labs done at lower risk locations instead of coming into the cancer center for lab work ahead of chemotherapy sessions. Lastly, in some places, particularly in COVID-19 hot spots, cancer nurses have been manning hotlines to answer cancer patients’ questions. Since patients are no longer allowed visitors, some cancer providers have shifted to recording their patients’ visits and sending the recordings to patients’ caregivers to maintain communication about what is going on in the treatment process.
4. When thinking about growing a cancer care program, you have to think about growth from two perspectives: local or regional growth. With local growth, you’re thinking about capturing more patients from a market share increase in your existing service areas, or the same set of patients but capturing a broader scope of their cancer services. With regional growth, you’re physically expanding your geographic reach to capture new patients from a broader service area. The local growth approach is more applicable for programs that haven’t saturated their current service area or haven’t developed mature enough programs that provide the full complement of cancer care services. The regional growth approach involves strategizing around what new geographies to focus on outside of your market. For regionalization, you have to think about many strategic considerations, such as where your patients are, where your competition is, what the implications are for physician alignment or partnerships and what is the attractiveness of the new market.
5. The four pillars to strategically growing a cancer program are clinical excellence and subspecialization, alignment with providers, proactive payer strategies and patient retention or consumerism strategies. Clinical excellence and subspecialization is the idea of offering patients a truly differentiated, higher quality product. Alignment with providers means having the right physicians and the right services. With payer relationships, it’s about contracting strategies that are more forward-thinking and would differentiate or build volume for your program. Patient retention or consumerism strategies are all of the elements related to the patient experience; patients increasingly expect cancer care services to be comprehensive, easily accessible, and delivered via an expert multidisciplinary team.

To view the full panel discussion, click here.