A Medical Device Daily

Cancer Clinics of Excellence (CCE; Nashville, Tennessee) said that it has launched with the goal of bringing together community-based oncologists to provide “high-quality, cost-effective, best-in-class care” for cancer patients.

Established in April, CCE said it is one of the largest physician-focused oncology services companies in the U.S., with 224 medical oncologists at 21 practices in more than a dozen states.

“The CCE physicians are joining together to take charge of healthcare and address the skyrocketing costs of cancer care, shrinking reimbursement and increased demands being placed on physicians. Never before has such a large number of oncology practices come together in such a meaningful way to define quality cancer care,” said Bob Smith, MD, chairman of CCE. “We created CCE because there is a fundamental need for physicians to drive this process and actively work together to solve these problems.

“We recognized the need to begin implementing evidence-based treatment protocols and migrate to a shared technology platform so we can measure the quality of the treatments we provide.”

CCE is establishing evidence-based treatment protocols for its members based on existing guidelines from the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, as well as published literature, in order to measure quality cancer care.

CCE estimates that oncology care represents about 8% of annual chemotherapy spending and exemplifies a next-generation model for providing quality care.

CCE said it believes that practices today need to utilize the best technology, as well as the best drugs, to improve care and control costs. With that in mind, CCE has contracted with OTN, a physician services company and one of the largest distributors of products and services to the community physician market, to provide its proprietary Lynx Technologies to CCE members.

“CCE and OTN have a shared vision of addressing the escalating costs of treating cancer patients while improving survival. We are pleased to be providing CCE physicians with the best shared technology platform in the marketplace so they can collect important clinical and treatment decision data at the point of care to measure themselves and improve outcomes,” said John Amos, president/CEO of OTN.