Best Practices in Oncology

The Benefits and Limitations of Oncology Guidelines – 05/15/2018
In the first of CQC’s “Best Practices in Oncology” webinar series, guest speaker, Anthony Ciarolla, MD, from Southern California Oncology Associates, discusses the following topics:

• Are guidelines the answer to High-Value Oncology
• How’s and Why’s of treatment guidelines
• NCCN Guidelines: The gold standard or the standard that ignores gold
• Personalize Oncology: The end Guidelines

Personalized Medicine – 11/29/2018
In the second of CQC’s “Best Practices in Oncology” webinar series, guest speaker, Mark Pegram, MD, from the Standford School of Medicine, discusses how the availability of new molecular approaches allow us to identify vast numbers of different genetic alterations in each malignancy enabling oncologist to employ biomarkers for optimization of cancer patients’ treatment. The speaker describes that by defining genetic alterations, it can help predict the course of the disease and offers the individual patient tailored therapy in accordance to genomic characteristics of the tumor.

Palliative Care – 02/07/2019
In the third of CQC’s “Best Practices in Oncology” webinar series, guest speaker, Kavitha Ramchandran, MD, from the Standford Cancer Institute for PathWell, discusses how palliative care can improve the quality of patients’ lives if combined with oncology care. The speaker describes how palliative care is delivered in today’s health care system, the value it provides and the difference between primary and specialist palliative care.

The Medical Necessity of Diagnostic Imaging – 03/28/2019
In the fourth of CQC’s “Best Practice in Oncology” webinar series, guest speaker Eric Chevlen, MD, discusses how laboratory tests and diagnostic imaging are medically necessary only if they improve health outcomes for patients. The speaker reviews the general principles of how to assess the value of these procedures and gives several examples of the real-life applications of these principles.