#ACCCNOC: Creating an Engaged Workplace, Leadership Perspectives, and Sparking Innovation

Day 2 of the 42nd National Oncology Conference (NOC) offered powerful insights about creating a trusting and engaged workforce, leadership perspectives on making the business case for an innovation, 4 up-and-coming innovative programs that show immense promise, and the presentations of the six 2025 Innovator Award Winners. A key goal of the NOC is for ACCC members to leave with actionable insights that they can bring back to their own programs and implement immediately—which is why ACCC places such importance on elevating the work of the Innovators on a national stage. 

Prioritizing the Human Connection in the Workplace 

The day began with opening keynote speaker, Susan Salgado, PhD, founder of Grason Consulting, who explored how to create a trusting and engaged workplace. Hailing from a background in the hospitality industry, Dr. Salgado understands the critical importance of cultivating a culture where happiness starts with employees so that it spills over into the customer or patient experience. 

“The stronger our workforce is, the more engaged we are with one another, the better the patient experience,” she said. “Fulfilled, engaged workers are an organization’s greatest competitive advantage.” Dr. Salgado stressed the importance of building a culture of mutual respect, where both leadership and employees are motivated and enthusiastic to take care of one another. 

Culture has many components, including values, beliefs, norms, and rituals, but perhaps the most important one is a clear standard of acceptable behaviors. If leadership neglects to identify and properly address instances of unacceptable behavior, the culture suffers. “It’s not enough to say our culture is one of mutual respect. You have to actively uphold the standard of acceptable behaviors among staff,” she urged, “because how we behave dictates the culture.” 

Dr. Salgado identified 3 key aspects of building the infrastructure to support a culture of hospitality: the people, the systems and structure in place, and the climate. Hiring not just based on qualifications and technical skills, but also emotional intelligence and culture fit is essential to building and maintaining a positive culture. Organizations must also have the processes in place to help employees succeed, anticipating their needs and providing them with a roadmap to get them where they need to be.  

Finally, leaders play a vital role in creating an environment where employees can thrive and solve problems together. “In this equation, the most important factor is leadership,” said Dr. Salgado. “How it feels to work is always directly tied to whoever is in charge of the workplace.” 

Dr. Salgado’s call to action was to start with one’s own attitude: “Embrace a positive and optimistic mindset at work each day, even as you face challenges. When you have colleagues around you who genuinely care about you and embrace you in difficult times, that makes all the difference.” 

Innovation to Meet the Needs of a Growing Patient Population 

One of the day’s highlights was the presentations of the 2025 Innovators, who shared the process of bringing their ideas to fruition—from gaining buy-in from leadership to implementation challenges. Notably, each innovation aligned with a key aspect of the 2025-2026 ACCC President’s Theme: Designing Oncology Care to Meet the Needs of a Growing Patient Population.  

For Fox Chase Cancer Center and its Ambulatory Care Excellence (ACE) Model, that entails Workforce Empowerment and Enablement. The model both addressed inefficiencies in patient access, clinic workflows, and care coordination, and ensured clinicians were working at the top of their license. Anna Liza Rodriguez, MSN, MHA, RN, OCN, NEA-BC, chief nursing officer and vice president of Nursing and Patient Care Services, explained the key components of the ACE Model: clinic role delineation, service line alignment, structured benchmarking for resource allocation, and protected RN time for care coordination. “Our providers are more satisfied, they feel their roles are more clearly defined, and they feel they have the tools to provide more effective care coordination,” said Rodriguez.  

Penn Medicine Princeton Health’s innovation—Implementing a Structured, Scalable Geriatric Oncology Program—speaks to Optimized Service Line Structures. Through the integration of comprehensive geriatric assessments into oncology workflows, real-time data tracking, multidisciplinary team coordination, and dedicated support services, the program positioned itself to address the unique needs of older patients with cancer. Rather than focusing exclusively on length of life or quality of life, patients in this model were connected with supportive and palliative care services, resulting in notable increases in advance care planning clinical trial enrollment.  “We sought to provide goal-concordant care. We wanted to make sure we are providing care that our patients want,” said Julianne Ani, MPH, manager of the Geriatric Oncology Program. 

“It’s really about implementation science,” explained Ramy Sedhom, MD, section chief of Medical Oncology. “How can you get clinicians and health systems to do the right thing, and how do you make doing the right thing the easy thing to do?” By making practical geriatric assessments the default process, Penn Medicine Princeton Health brought about significant culture change. 

Two Innovators embodied the theme of Technology as a Workforce Multiplier, each with AI at their core: WellSpan Cancer Institute’s Machine Learning-Enabled Decision Support to Improve Oncology End-of-Life Outcomes and Lifepoint Health’s AI-Driven Healthy Person Program for Cancer Detection and Treatment.  

WellSpan recognized that underutilization of palliative care resources results in poor patient experiences, unnecessary hospitalizations, high health care costs, and preventable in-hospital deaths. In response, the team implemented their existing machine learning cognitive computing model that predicts 12-month mortality risk into their clinical decision support tool. “We were in a rough spot, not prioritizing comprehensive palliative care,” said Andrew Munchel, MSN, RN, OCN, CPHQ, quality program administrator of the Oncology Service Line. “After implementation, we saw an 84% increase in palliative care referrals for stage IV cancer, a 14% decrease in inpatient deaths, and a 59% decrease in provider best practice alert burden. It cut out the noise.” 

Andrew Ambort, MD, palliative medicine physician, reflected on a powerful piece of feedback he once received from the ICU medical director at WellSpan Cancer Institute: “I was wondering where all the cancer patients went. I don’t see them in the ICU at end of life anymore.” “This feedback speaks to our impact,” said Dr. Ambort. “It has stayed with us to this day.” 

Lifepoint Health, meanwhile, sought to remove the significant barriers to high-quality care faced by patients with cancer living in rural areas through the Healthy Person Program. This initiative leverages AI to analyze the health records of all patients who have received care at Lifepoint Health facilities and identify those who are at risk of developing catastrophic diseases. “This innovation isn’t just about technology, it’s about people, purpose, and our mission of making our communities healthier,” said Bart Daugherty, vice president of Clinical Technology and Systems. “This program proves that early detection at scale is not only possible; it’s sustainable. Doing what’s right for patients can also be what’s right for the health system.” 

The fourth component of Dr. Hopkins’ theme—Capacity Building at Scale—was addressed by Highlands Oncology and Shaw Cancer Center. The former’s Sustainable Model for Remote Patient Monitoring has used electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) to great success by identifying acute, preventable issues that would normally land patients in the emergency department and has mitigated unnecessary visits as a result. “With ePROs, nurses have the answers at their fingertips,” said Lauren Hughes, RN, director of Infusion Services. “Currently our average resolution time for a symptom report is 19 minutes. This allows our nurses to focus on what matters most—patient care.”  

Finally, Shaw Cancer Center’s Shaw at Home: An Oncology Specific Home and Community-Based Palliative Care Program leaned on its tight-knit community as its most valuable resource in improving access to high-quality in-home support services. “We knew we had a gap in our services. We are rural—we had a 30+ person waitlist for home care and hospice services and very limited staff and limited capacity to do this work and to do it well, so we knew we had to innovate,” explained Erin Perejda, LCSW, supportive care services manager. “It took every part of our health care organization to build this, and it took buy-in from everyone to demonstrate how important this need was,” said Patricia Hardenbergh, MD, FASTRO, medical director at Shaw Cancer Center. Not only has Shaw at Home instilled passion and engagement among staff members, but patients have rated the program extremely highly, citing that they feel deeply known and seen by their providers. 

Innovation at the Helm 

After learning how the 2025 Innovators brought their initiatives to life and the tremendous patient impact they’ve had, attendees had the opportunity to hear from program leaders about the logistical and financial factors they consider in a compelling business case. Facilitating the panel was Russell Langan, MD, FACS, FSSO, associate chief surgical officer for System Integration and Quality and director of Surgical Oncology at RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers Cancer Institute, who opened the session by asking what criteria panelists use to evaluate whether an innovative idea is worth pursuing in their organization. 

For Thomas Bird, vice president of Business Development, Enterprise Growth & Innovation at City of Hope, it all starts with patient access and outcomes. “This is the first and most important pillar. Return on investment (ROI) is absolutely important, but it’s one part of a comprehensive business assessment.” Carla Sims, associate vice president at Atrium Health Levine Cancer Center, agreed. “We look at this as a return on mission just as much as a return on investment.” 

Christopher DeSimone, MD, FACOG, executive chief medical officer at Markey Cancer Center and professor of Gynecologic Oncology at the University of Kentucky Healthcare, commented that as a physician leader, he leads with 4 tenets, the first and most important of which is patient safety and quality of care. Next comes access, provider engagement and satisfaction, and fiscal wellbeing. “I feel very passionate about this as a physician leader—I never lead with finances. I want to have meaningful conversations with physicians and staff when they bring ideas to me,” said Dr. DeSimone.  

On the topic of common pitfalls seen in proposals, Bird noted a lack of adequately addressing factors like outcomes, access, positioning, and ROI. "I see proposals that are compelling, but it’s the very tip of the business case or strategy.”  

“Come with data, come with something that will support outcomes,” Dr. DeSimone recommended. He acknowledged that it can be tempting to take ideas straight to the C-suite, but urged attendees to start with their local leadership and work their way up. “Make this a team sport—one person’s idea isn’t enough. You need input and support from nurses, pharmacists, administrators, and patients.” 

Health care as an industry is innately risk-averse, because caring for human beings requires a constant effort to do no harm. Dr. Langan challenged the panel to consider a key question: are we afraid to fail in health care? Bird emphasized that there has to be room for failure to advance care strategies and thus patient outcomes. Sims agreed: “Our intent is to be fearlessly creative so we can fail fast and therefore learn fast.” 

Moving on to strategies to increase alignment between clinical and administrative priorities, Bird advocated for a service-focused approach to leadership. “Executive leaders are duty bound to empower their teams. They need to understand what the challenges are in the hospital versus the outpatient facilities. That means being closely integrated and trying to knock down barriers between teams.” 

“Cancer is a team sport and so is innovation,” said Dr. DeSimone. “It requires diversity of thought. For an innovation to reach the top of the queue, it needs to touch everyone at a system level.”  

Finally, the panelists agreed on the central role patient experience plays in their decision-making around new services or technologies. “Patient satisfaction is paramount. We are a service industry. We take care of people. This is why we get up in the morning,” Dr. DeSimone stated. “As providers, we have to remember what it means to be a patient. How can we empower staff to give that extra loving touch that makes someone’s day?” 

Sparking Innovation 

The final presentations of the day were a new addition to NOC in 2025: four Spark Sessions. These 10-minute, dynamic sessions spotlighted early-stage programs that are just beginning to take shape but already show exciting potential. 

Rita Assi, MD, assistant professor of Medicine at Indiana University’s Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center, discussed improving the care of pregnant individuals diagnosed with hematologic malignancies. "This is one of the most complex and emotionally charged situations in medicine,” she stated. “At its heart, this is about coming together to act when 2 lives are at stake and time is running out.”  

A major barrier to providing care for these patients is a lack of guidelines. As a result, care is improvised, and families are forced to make impossible choices, with maternal survival frequently being compromised by treatment delays. Dr. Assi’s pilot program, the Seed, seeks to standardize care and build the translational bridge into precision medicine. “We must leverage the advancements we have in this field,” she urged. “Having a rare diagnosis does not mean treatment is impossible; it just means it is more urgent.”   

Next, Lisa Lafranchi, PA-C, physician assistant at HealthPartners, spoke to the development of a novel oncology cannabis clinic that is improving patient quality of life. Patients have a lot of questions about how they can use cannabis to manage symptoms, but most clinicians do not feel well-prepared to discuss risks and benefits. In response, HealthPartners created a Cannabis and Cancer Research and Education Clinic to support patients and oncologists through personal education, detailed dosing guidelines, recommendations, and follow-up. 

Jai Patel, PharmD, associate vice president of Translational Research and director of Cancer Pharmacology & Pharmacogenomics at Atrium Health Levine Cancer as well as associate professor in the Department of Cancer Biology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, followed with a discussion of implementing DPYD genotyping to reduce severe adverse events and hospitalizations with fluoropyrimidine-based chemotherapy. About 6% of patients carry a genetic variant that results in an increased risk of severe toxicity when treated with this form of chemotherapy, but many prospective studies show genotype-guided dosing reduces severe toxicities and drug-related fatalities in DPYD carriers.  

Dr. Patel walked through Atrium Health’s stepwise approach to implementing DPYD genotyping—from provider education and stakeholder engagement to seeking funding, securing physician champions, and launching a pilot in clinic—and shared that they saw a massive reduction in incidence of grade 3 toxicities and hospitalizations for patients that were tested for the genetic variant prior to beginning treatment.  

In the final session of the day, Adrianna Oraiqat, pancreatic cancer care coordinator at Moffitt Cancer Center, discussed how the creation of her role coupled with embedded pain management vastly improved outcomes for patients with pancreatic cancer. With a 5-year survival rate of 13%, pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease, and Oraiqat’s team was highly motivated to improve the patient experience by reducing treatment delays and improving access to pain management.  

In response, the team developed the pancreatic cancer care coordinator role with the intent to improve disease tracking, increase scheduling efficiency, and increase patient-clinic communication. “We saw much greater adherence to institutional treatment pathways as a result of proactive resolution of scheduling issues, as well as a 50% reduction in wait time for supportive care medicine initial consults.” 

To cap off a day packed with enlightening sessions and meaningful opportunities for cross-collaboration, attendees took advantage of the natural beauty of our host city, Denver, at the Après ACCC evening event—complete with live music, local cuisine, and beer and hot chocolate tastings against the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains.  

Stay tuned for the final blog covering the 42nd National Oncology Conference, featuring panel discussions about women leaders in oncology, aligning oncology and primary care models, and shared solutions in rural oncology.