What is OPEN Doing for Its Members?
OPEN has initiated a focused series of projects:
Determining the costs of oncology pharmacy to inform policy makers.
Top priority goes to an extensive study of the costs of providing oncology pharmacy services in a hospital setting. Congress approved of a study in the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act (MMA). This study was suggested by ACCC as a mechanism for assuring that the costs of providing oncology drugs were accounted for in the reimbursement process. Currently, hospitals are reimbursed only for the cost of drugs in the outpatient setting. No provision is made for the preparation, storage, inventory control, and waste management of these highly toxic drugs.
OPEN leadership and ACCC policy staff are already meeting with MedPAC staff to discuss their study of costs. At the same time, OPEN will develop a parallel study with a nationally recognized contractor to assure that the MedPAC staff is fully informed of the issues. A credible study that can be presented to policymaking bodies that documents the real costs of providing these drugs will be invaluable to the profession.
Web site tools and educational forums.
There are a lot of challenges and few tools available to the oncology pharmacist members of OPEN. Focusing on this need, OPEN is in the process of developing an extraordinary web site as part of the ACCC's website with a variety of tools and information/educational mechanisms specifically for oncology pharmacists.
Among the tools under development:
- A simulated pharmacy comparison tool, incorporating both drugs and quality-of-life parameters
- A bulletin board for OPEN members
- A series of educational tools
- Spreadsheets for oncology pharmacists on the HOPPS.
Our plan is to rapidly increase the amount of information and educational material available to our oncology pharmacists… focusing on communications which will help them explain the rapidly changing environment to their hospital oncology colleagues.
Educational materials on the positive changes for hospital outpatient drugs.
For several years, the news for oncology drugs in the outpatient setting has all been negative. Now, suddenly, due to the incorporation of the ACCC language in the MMA, that has all changed. Unfortunately, hospital attitudes and information on these types of changes lag far behind reality. Our challenge is to get information about these positive changes out to the oncology team in a number of different ways. If hospitals are to be prepared for the potential of new cancer patient volumes in 2005, there is a great deal of capacity building that needs to be addressed.
Among the projects we plan is a booklet on the changes in the APCs and the value of those changes to hospital outpatient infusion centers.
Building the educational core of oncology pharmacy at ACCC.
We plan to begin with two national educational sessions for oncology pharmacists and OPEN members at the two national ACCC meetings. This format worked successfully in our two initial tests. We are going to consider some joint activities with hospital administrators to discuss mutual concerns… a key issue for both constituencies and an excellent forum for interdisciplinary collaboration, since many of these hospital administrators already attend ACCC. We are currently working on a full day program concept that we will begin implementing at the fall ACCC meeting.
