The annual patient-centered cancer care program® (PCOC) meeting of The American Journal of Managed Care® (AJMC®) returns to Nashville, Tennessee, November 7-8, bringing together oncology stakeholders for 2 days of discussions and presentations on the rapidly changing landscape of oncology care. This year’s theme, “Navigating the Cancer Journey,” sets the stage for discussions on improving the quality of cancer care while mitigating financial toxicity, as well as integrating the latest therapies and innovations in clinical practice.
Like its predecessors, the 12th Annual PCOC Meeting aims to bring together a community of providers, payers, policy leaders and members of the pharmaceutical industry to foster conversations around innovation and improvement of care in the field of oncology. The in-person event will cover a wide range of topics impacting oncology stakeholders while allowing time for networking and informal discussions from the various panels and presentations that will take place.
Meeting Co-Chairs Joseph Alvarnas, MD, vice president of government affairs and senior medical director of AccessHope, City of Hope; and Kashyap Patel, MD, CEO of Carolina Blood and Cancer Care Associates and immediate past president of the Community Oncology Alliance, are editor-in-chief and associate editor, respectively, of Evidence-Based Oncology™a publication of AJMC.
The meeting agenda includes expert speakers and panel discussions, with discussion topics including the intersection of cancer genomics and health equity, burnout in clinical pathways, models value-based payment and cancer treatment sequencing considerations. The patient journey will also be explored, with panels discussing the financial toxicity of the cancer journey and tools to engage patients throughout treatment.
Keynote speaker Merril Hoge, former National Football League running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Bears, will discuss the patient perspective on beating cancer. Hoge is a non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivor and has been cancer free since 2003.
Featured speaker Kathryn E. Hudson, MD, director of survivorship at Texas Oncology, will discuss the utility of electronic patient-reported outcomes to improve cancer care in a values-based landscape. Financial toxicity, an increasingly important problem for cancer patients amid rising costs, will be highlighted in a lecture by featured speaker Ryan W. Huey, MD, MS, assistant professor in the Department of Medicine. University of Texas Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology. MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Johann Brandes, MD, will discuss precision medicine in non-small cell lung cancer, which has seen an increase in the number of targetable disease features in recent years.
Another hot topic in oncology care, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) will be the focus of a fireside chat taking place on the first day of the meeting, “Navigating the PBM Landscape: How an Economist health care sees it.” The conversation will feature Erin Trish, PhD, co-director of the Schaeffer Center at the University of Southern California and associate professor of pharmaceutical and health economics at the USC School of Pharmacy; will answer questions from Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, chief medical officer of Tennessee Oncology.
