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Q&A with Jack Kolosky, Executive VP and COO of Moffitt Cancer Center

by Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | July 06, 2018
Women's Health
From the July 2018 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


We’ve tried to do that through various partnerships with some of the payor community. We’ve embarked on experimental programs, the first with Florida Blue. We’ve since worked on other programs that target the cost of care with various quality outcomes. We’ve done those with Aetna and United Healthcare and we’re in discussion with several others. We’ve been able to demonstrate our value to those plans as well as helping them think through how they might do some of these programs elsewhere.

I’d also like to note our Pathways program. Our Pathways program is based on multidisciplinary care. We believe it delivers the quality of care with better outcomes at a competitive cost relative to the rest of the market.

HCB News: Is there a particular challenge with outcome-based care for a cancer center?
JK: One of the ways we try to manage outcomes is by stratifying risk based on the patient condition when they present to us. That’s indicated by the stage of their cancer and therefore, what treatments might come of that. I think the quality indicators that many of these programs are looking for, quite frankly, they come to us to find them.

One challenge I’d note is that we’ve talked to some of our pharmaceutical colleagues about joining with us. The idea is if a drug doesn’t show a response, could we get credit or something along those lines. To date there hasn’t really been a response from the pharmaceutical companies. I think that’s a frontier that still needs to be explored.

HCB News: With the migratory nature of many of your patients, is there a lot of effort in telehealth?
JK: We feel strongly regardless of where our patients are that they’re getting the right care at the right place at the right time. So the idea that we’ll transition care, whether chemotherapy or radiation or follow-up, is just something we do. However, it’s not so much yet with telehealth, although we have done some pilot programs with consultations for patients who are distant for follow-up. It’s been well-received, but not something we do much of at this time.

HCB News: Are there any big projects in the works that you can share with our readers?
JK: There’s CAR T therapy (Chimeric Antigen Receptor T), where a patient’s blood cells are extracted and re-engineered, and reinfused, so that those cells attack the cancer cells in the patient. There’s also immunotherapies that have amazing promise for substantial breakthroughs for patients.

We’re also in the final stages of working through our strategic plan. We’ll continue to serve more patients, continue to emphasize personalized medicine through better molecular profiling, to get the treatments exactly right, and I think we’ll continue to advance our digital work – remote monitoring and things along those lines.

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