Susan G. Komen® Funding for Participation in Quality Programs for Practices With High Proportions of African-American Patients With Breast Cancer

ASCO and Susan G. Komen® offer funding for eight practices in specific U.S. urban centers with high proportions of African-American patients with breast cancer to participate in ASCO’s Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®), QOPI® Certification, and Quality Training Program (QTP) for a three-year period.

The goal of this funding is to improve the delivery of cancer care in African-American Patients with Breast Cancer by improving the ability of practices serving this patient population to engage in quality improvement. To achieve this goal, each participating practice will engage in an individualized, structured quality improvement program.

The program will include each practice’s participation in abstracting chart data in QOPI®, following training sessions on the process. QOPI® is ASCO’s quality assessment program that has helped more than 1,000 practices to date conduct self-examinations and identify specific areas for quality improvement. Participating practices can report on 150 evidence-based quality measures through the easy-to-use collection tool and receive individual performance scores by practice, site, and provider, as well as benchmarked scores aggregated from all participating practices. The data and results then can be used to inform future quality improvement projects and initiatives.

Once the practice meets or exceeds a benchmark QOPI® score on measures that compare the quality of their care against national standards, they can take the next step of applying for QOPI Certification. This entails undergoing an on-site review and peer review by a select team of oncology professionals to evaluate its performance in areas that affect patient care and safety, including

  • Qualifications of practice staff
  • Chart documentation
  • Chemotherapy preparation and administration
  • Patient monitoring and assessment
  • Preparedness for emergency situations.

Next, each practice will participate in ASCO’s six-month QTP course, which is comprised of three in-person sessions that include seminars, case examples, and small-group exercises, as well as on-site work at the practice and virtual meetings with ASCO staff and improvement coaches.

Finally, each practice will host a QTP one-day workshop to help incorporate the principles of quality improvement in their respective institutions.

Current Status Updates for the Eight Practices in this Project:

The ASCO/Komen Quality Training Program Project Participants are currently registered in the Quality Training Program Winter Course, completing their first Virtual Learning Session on January 15, 2021.  Practices will continue working with the ASCO Grants and QTP Teams regarding their projects until June 2021. The practices will then transition into Virtual Learning Collaborative Webinars and QTP One-Day Workshops.