As MOQC celebrates our 15th anniversary, I wanted to share some reflections on where we came from and where we are today. MOQC was founded in 2006 by Douglas Blayney, MD and started with a small yet robust team. As the Michigan liaison for the American Society of Clinical Oncology Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®), the goal of MOQC was to be the nidus of all things QOPI® for the state of Michigan. Jeffrey Smerage, MD, PhD succeeded Dr. Blayney, and I was honored to be selected as MOQC’s third Program Director in 2018.
Our Coordinating Center team has expanded to 22 members, and I am fortunate to work with what I consider to be the most remarkable people who honor our core values of trust, integrity, compassion, collaboration, and growth mindset on a daily basis.
Our administrative specialists, Dave Bolen and Karen Jovanelly, manage our calendars, our accounts, our meeting logistics, send you and your practices resources, and do innumerable other important things to make MOQC what it is and to help it run smoothly. Our abstractors, Heather Behring, Jenn Broadhurst, Deana Jansa, Kleanthe Kolizeras, Cindy Michalek, Heather Rombach, Deborah Turner-Smith, and Shawn Winsted, are committed to abstracting data according to the highest standards and are available when you have questions about your practice. Their leadership in creating resources about our measures and in reminding us of the uniqueness of each practice is priceless, as is their expertise. Our project managers, Vanessa Aron, Ashley Bowen, Dilhara Muthukuda, Natalia Simon, and Shayna Weiner, bring their experience and passion to their work with your practices and over a dozen initiatives (read more inside). Beth Rizzo is the lead coordinator for the MiGHT study and brings a wealth of expertise about project management. Eric Voisine, our data analyst, dives into the data for each meeting, for our connection visits at your practice, and conducted the multivariate analyses you saw at the Biannual Meeting. His ability to turn on a dime to generate results makes MOQC nimble in responding to you. Finally, every person on our leadership team, Dr. Emily Mackler, Dr. Shitanshu Uppal, Dr. Chris Friese, and Keli DeVries, is a creative, committed, visionary leader committed to you, your practice, and your patients and their caregivers.
Our Patient and Caregiver Oncology Quality Council, which we started in 2018, now has 28 members who provide not only the voice of the patient and caregiver to everything we do in MOQC, but also leadership. I am certain that you have been moved by their expertise and stories, motivated by their insightful questions, and have benefitted from the insights they lend to our initiatives. We are especially grateful for those on the Council who come from marginalized communities.
You have consistently improved performance on nearly all of our measures. When we do not meet the measures, you approach your data with curiosity, always hoping to improve care while we attempt to reduce the burden of measurement in your practice.
As you know (and can read more about throughout this newsletter), we’ve expanded our work into collecting patient-reported outcomes, mitigating food insecurity, and collecting social needs information from our patients and meeting those needs through our partnership with 2-1-1 and others. We have an Equity Task Force that is accelerating the work we need to do to ensure that every patient receives the best quality of care and care experience. We have recently been awarded two extramural grants to develop a deeper understanding of what financial navigation can do to address the extraordinary financial burden of cancer care. Our resources are now available in nearly all the languages used in Michigan, including Braille. Our very own database, MOQCLink, created in partnership with Arbor Research, allows us to improve our measures to accurately collect what we want to measure. Our MOQC Excellence in Quality Certification Program is a model for other collaborative quality initiatives in Michigan. Your work on your Equity Action Plans shows how important it is to provide the best quality care to every patient regardless of who they are, where they live, or their life circumstances. Many of your practices are cancer drug repositories through the non-profit organization YesRX, which provides unused medications to patients who would otherwise not be able to afford them.
MOQC is at the forefront of quality improvement. We would not be where we are today without your participation and your leadership. In an age of widespread cynicism, you give me hope. Whether you serve or have served on one of our committees or task forces, spoken at our meetings, shared your stories and resources, or participated in other ways, your creativity, compassion, and gifts all make MOQC better tomorrow than we are today.
Here’s to another 15 years of continued success in MOQC.
Dr. Jennifer Griggs
Program Director