Insights from CPC+CBEx 2023

John Hennessy, MBA, details his highlights from CPC+CBEx 2023 and answers questions related to cancer care, industry consolidation, and the future of cancer care at home.

Hennessy: John Hennessy, Principal of Valuate Health Consultancy.

What have been some of your key takeaways from the conference so far?

Hennessy: Some of the key takeaways have been there’s a lot of innovation going on in this space and I think there are people leading innovation and I think there are people struggling with innovation, and that’s no surprise. It can happen in oncology care, all of health care, just in everyday life and so I think that one of the things that’s very encouraging about this conference is people are thinking of new ideas and trying to approach new ways of doing things. I think using the evidence base we have in the best way possible, but understanding that there are gaps and understanding that not everybody is going to be on the leading edge and there’s room for everybody to be successful here, but you know the innovation and the innovative thinking are sort of you know really driving me and keeping my brain going.

What are your thoughts on the future of cancer care at home?

Hennessy: There absolutely is a future to cancer care at home and I think it’s being defined in the people we had on the panel and in many ways defining it. I think it’s organizations who’ve decided they need to find a new way of taking care of patients. Either with their existing opportunities or existing resources or partnering with other folks, there are folks like Reimagine Care who are sort of creating new solutions to problems that are otherwise very difficult to solve. There are also folks who are really gonna struggle with this change and I think finding the right patient, right place, right time, is really important and we run the risk with any innovation, we can exacerbate inequities, or we can use these tools to narrow them. I think that’s sort of an undiscovered country at this point, that’s certainly something I would love to revisit next year and see how some of these organizations have advanced their programs and maybe what they are measuring and what those measurements are telling us.

What are some of the benefits of industry consolidation for patients and/or providers?

Hennessy: Yeah it’s a really good question, you know, I think there are positives and negatives with consolidation to the extent that consolidation can offer new opportunities to patients or bring opportunities to patients who otherwise don’t have them, I think that can be a good thing. If it closes sites of care, if it limits what is available that can be a challenge as well, with consolidation we often see price increases but that may be part of what we need if we are going to improve quality and improve access, so I think it’s a mixed bag. I don’t think it’s always a negative thing but it isn’t always mean you are going to get some benefit out of consolidation, it’s really about the operators, you know, there is it a churn and burn? Is it acquire it and do something else with it, or am I gonna acquire it and bring some assets to play for folks who otherwise don’t? When we first started growing our practice we went from having small doctors’ offices to having comprehensive cancer centers. I think that’s a really good way of consolidating. I’ve seen others where that’s simply not the case. So, there’s no right or wrong answer here, but I think there are good players doing goof things and some who maybe aren’t quite doing the same.

What changes would you like to see highlighted at CPC+CBEx 2024?

Hennessy: So I think one of the things that’s going to be really interesting from a clinical standpoint and from a clinical pathway standpoint is how we’re approaching neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapies for immunotherapy. We’re certainly seeing clinical trials showing us PFS data and the question is, you know, what's the adoption rate? When do I adopt it? How do I help people benefit from these things when it's appropriate or keep them away from those opportunities when their choices are a little bit more in those areas? So, I'd love to see how the clinical pathways start to learn from these experiences and translate clinical trial information into real -world data into pathways that help physicians and patients make the best decision about their care.

Any final thoughts you would like to share?

Hennessy: I would love to share more thoughts. What's really fun about this Congress and what's unique about it is we're focused on the bleeding edge of the envelope. And I think the discussion today about cancer care at home was very much something like that where you're talking about advancing and innovating and some of the tensions involved in that and the different ways that can be done. And that's something you're going to see here, not only this year, I think you'll see it next year and future years. That's what we try to do is sort of explore those frontiers, get the best practitioners from each of those spaces, bring them here, and have good conversation with audiences. So that's what I'm looking forward to next year is just, we continue to push the envelope and continue to find ways to bring innovations into practice and into patients and caregivers' lives.