Texas Oncology, one of the largest community oncology practices in the country, which covers almost 1,000 suppliers in 280 locations in Texas, has announced an association of several years with the Company of Continuing Care platforms Canopy, after driving the solution in its yellow cancer center.
Canopy provides oncology practices a platform for all the attention that occurs between visits. The multichannel multichannel Epro of canopy (electronic results informed by the patient) and the remote classification system allow practices to identify and prioritize patients who need help and solve their problems. The company also helps oncological practices to generate new refund currents from programs such as the improved oncology model (EOM) and remote therapeutic monitoring (RTM).
Canopy tools, which include remote monitoring, decisions support and reimbursement capture, have been integrated with Flatiron Health and I Knowmed EHR systems, EHR of Ontada and part of McKesson’s oncological solutions set.
The company aims to expand its AI capacities to improve patient care and support the adoption of new complex cancer therapies.
In an email of questions and answers, Debra Patt, MD, Ph.D., MBA, Executive Vice President of Public Policies and Strategy of Texas Oncology, explained why the association with Canopy was attractive.
«First, we know how to respond to the patient’s symptoms before we are taking better care of them. They will be less affected by their cancer and cancer treatment. They will be less likely to go to the emergency room or hospital and have a better result,» Patt said. «Our association with Canopy serves this goal, since it creates an operational framework for the response time of symptoms faster. In second place, we want our staff to work at the top of the license, and the association allows our nurses to be nurses more than the time by reducing the administrative documentation loads of their work through the innovative use of AI and support of decisions.»
Patt said that during the yellow clinic pilot, they saw high adoption rates. «This means that symptom management tools have a better opportunity to serve patients,» he said.
Patt was asked if Canopy will help the performance of Texas Oncology in the improved oncology model. «Absolutely,» she replied. «But we are not limiting it to this small population of patients, since we believe that all patients can benefit from this technology. In Texas Oncology it is our mission to offer the highest quality of cancer care near home and we will continue making investments in alignment with that mission.»
«We are helping oncology practices through software and tools and reimbursement and experience so that cancer care is continuous, rather than episodic only,» said Lavi Kwiatkowsky, CEO and founder of Canopy in an interview with Health innovation. He is helping them to change their reagent to proactive approach, he added.
Kwiatkowsky explained that Canopy has been working relatively in silence and under the radar in this problem since 2018. «We start building remote monitoring. We learned that it doesn’t matter how much monitor if the practice is not configured to respond to all these problems,» he said. «Therefore, we create decisions for nurses to help them transmit what an emergency is and what it is not, what should be done. We build algorithms to separate the urgent of non -urgent ones. We have created ways to capture reimbursement for chronic attention, and we have advocated the refund with Medicare for many years, and now we have remote therapeutic monitoring codes.»
Kwiatkowsky said he would describe the last six years how to realize that monitoring is not enough. For the patient to be successful, he must make the practice successful, he said. «So we have been building tools for practices for six years. We are their CRM, so for all those who call the office, a ticket is captured in canopy. We are its classification algorithms. We are the remote monitoring system. We are its system to support decisions. And we capture reimbursements for work.»
He said that with the association with Texas Oncology, Canopy is announcing some things. One is that they are now serving 10% of the US market. «We are taking this that it was shown that survival increases or improves the results and now we are spreading it in the United States, added Kwiatkowsky.» We are going down the barriers to adopt it and we are even making it profitable that they adopt it. «We have cancer centers that work with us that earn $ 10 million or more of the reimbursements associated with this support work to their patients. Now, the reason why payers are paying is because it has been shown to save much more money.»
He said they are seeing a coverage of approximately 75% in insurance, which means everything Medicare, Medicare Advantage and approximately half of the commercial payers.
All practices in EOM and other main practices in community oncology already have nurses who address patients’ problems among visits. They are called triage nurses in oncology. «What we do is empower those teams with dedicated workflow solutions that they didn’t have,» Kwiatkowsky said.
There is some change management involved in making the implementation, he said, but the practices find it worth it. «Texas Oncology was doing some of these things before; we only gave them a better system that has them doing less work.»
