Benchmarks for value in cancer care: an analysis of a large commercial population.

Purpose: Cancer costs are increasing at an unprecedented rate. Key cost drivers include chemotherapy, hospital admissions/emergency room visits, and aggressive end-of-life care. We sought to evaluate these costs in a commercial payer population in collaboration with consultants from Milliman.

Creating a process to standardize regimen order sets within an electronic health record.

Purpose: US Oncology uses regimen order sets in clinical practice to treat patients. However, the process to assure accuracy and upkeep of these order sets has not been described. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the regimens housed in the electronic health record, iKnowMed, to determine their appropriateness and accuracy.

Conservation planning as a transdisciplinary process.

Despite substantial growth in the field of conservation planning, the speed and success with which conservation plans are converted into conservation action remains limited. This gap between science and action extends beyond conservation planning into many other applied sciences and has been linked to complexity of current societal problems, compartmentalization of knowledge and management sectors, and limited collaboration between scientists and decision makers. Transdisciplinary approaches have been proposed as a possible way to address these challenges and to bridge the gap between science and action.