The MOQC January Biannual meeting was held virtually on Friday, January 20, 2023. The meeting was lively and very well attended. In addition to performance measures, presentations covered anti-cancer therapy stewardship, the new MOQCLink database, equity across MOQC, and quality of care at the end of life.
Dr. Lydia Benitez, a Clinical Assistant Professor and Leukemia Pharmacy Specialist with Michigan Medicine and the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy, presented on oncology stewardship. Oncology stewardship is a set of coordinated strategies to improve the use of antineoplastic agents with the goal of enhancing patient health outcomes while reducing financial toxicity. Dr. Benitez presented information on cost of cancer treatment, financial toxicity, and drug efficacy, using case studies to illustrate barriers to proper stewardship. To implement stewardship in practices, meeting participants were encouraged to evaluate and standardize treatment plans, discuss financial toxicity regularly, promote optimization of quality of life, and encourage rational use of medications and palliative services.
Arbor Research presented on the progress of MOQCLink data capture and reporting tools. They provided a live demonstration of MOQCLink, illustrating how data is entered and what dashboards will be available in the future to view practice data. Each user will have the ability to view data in MOQCLink based on their permission levels. MOQCLink is now live and is being exclusively used to collect data for MOQC measures.
Dr. Jennifer Griggs presented on one of MOQC’s Strategic Objectives – Centering Equity. Disparities in cancer care have been seen across a variety of clinical and non-clinical factors. Advances in treatment and diagnostics tend to be most accessible to those who are most privileged, leaving other patients behind regarding early diagnosis and access to novel and innovative treatment options. Addressing and acting on identified inequities is vital across our collaborative. Dr. Griggs shared a multivariate analysis of four MOQC measures to identify disparities in care using available variables of age, sex, race, ethnicity, cancer diagnosis, and calendar year.
The final presentation of the day was from Dr. Thomas Gribbin, the Vice President of Cancer and Hematology Centers of Western Michigan and the Founding Director of Lacks Cancer Center, Trinity Health Grand Rapids. Dr. Gribbin presented on understanding how the words, goals, and outcomes of cancer care have changed over time. He highlighted that the importance of the language and clinical terminology with which we choose to communicate has the potential to limit us or sway our approaches to determining the best choice of cancer care in any unique scenario.