Advancing Performance Measurement in Oncology: Quality Oncology Practice Initiative Participation and Quality Outcomes

The American health care system, including the cancer care system, is under pressure to improve patient out-comes and lower the cost of care. Government payers have articulated an interest in partnering with the private sector to create learning communities to measure quality and improve the value of health care. In 2006, the Ameri-can Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) unveiled the Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI), which has be-come a key component of the measurement system to promote quality cancer care. QOPI is a physician-led, vol-untary, practice-based, quality-improvement program, us-ing performance measurement and benchmarking among oncology practices across the United States. Since its inception, ASCO’s QOPI has grown steadily to include 973 practices as of November 2010. One key area that QOPI has addressed is end-of-life care. During the most recent data collection cycle in the Fall of 2010, those practices completing multiple data collection cycles had better per-formance on care of pain compared with sites participating for the first time (62.61 % v 46.89%). Similarly, repeat QOPI participants demonstrated meaningfully better perfor-mance than their peers in the rate of documenting discus-sions of hospice and palliative care (62.42 % v 54.65%) and higher rates of hospice enrollment. QOPI demonstrates how a strong performance measurement program can lead to improved quality and value of care for patients