Measuring the improving quality of outpatient care in medical oncology practices in the United States.

Purpose: The American Society of Clinical Oncology Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI) has provided a method for measuring process-based practice quality since 2006. We sought to determine whether QOPI scores showed improvement in measured quality over time and, if change was demonstrated, which factors in either the measures or participants were associated with improvement.

Methods: The analysis included 156 practice groups from a larger group of 308 that submitted data from 2006 to 2010.

Evolution and elements of the quality oncology practice initiative measure set.

Background: Over the past 5 years, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has supported the development of a Web-based quality-reporting tool in response to a recognized need to provide medical oncologists the opportunity to demonstrate the quality of care that they are providing to patients.

Methods: The development of quality measures, their basis in the literature, and the descriptions and organizational structure of the measures are discussed.

Results: Specific results are the property of practices and are not shared outside of the practices except in aggregate.

Origins of the quality oncology practice initiative.

In 2002, the ASCO Board of Directors reviewed a proposal for a new approach to promoting high-quality cancer care. Today, the Quality Oncology Practice Initiative has 500 participating practices that report data on approximately 35,000 medical records annually.

Measuring supportive care in medical oncology practice: lessons learned from the quality oncology practice initiative.

We provide a brief review of the use of quality measures to assess supportive care in the medical oncology office. Specifically, we discuss the development and implementation of supportive care measures in the Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI), a voluntary quality measurement and improvement program of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. QOPI has demonstrated that medical oncologists voluntarily engage in self-assessment and often select measures related to supportive care for measurement and improvement.

Improvement in oncology practice performance through voluntary participation in the Quality Oncology Practice Initiative.

Purpose: The Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI) became available to all American Society of Clinical Oncology member physicians in 2006 as a voluntary medical oncology practice-based quality measurement and improvement project. QOPI assesses practice performance for a series of evidence- and consensus-based process measures, relying on practices to complete structured chart reviews and submit data via a secure Web-based portal.

Methods: This analysis focused on the 71 practices that participated in both the March and September 2006 data collections (7,624 charts abstracted in March and 10,240 in September).

History of the treatment of childhood ALL: a paradigm for cancer cure.

The history of the treatment of childhood leukemia from 1950 to the present is reviewed here. Particular emphasis is placed on the 'Total Therapy' studies conducted at St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Under the guidance of Donald Pinkel, MD, the first medical director of St Jude, variations in chemotherapy and craniospinal irradiation were tried, and by Study XV, begun in 2000, a 4-year event-free survival of 92+/-7% had been achieved.

A process for measuring the quality of cancer care: the Quality Oncology Practice Initiative.

Purpose: The Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI) is a practice-based system of quality self-assessment sponsored by the participants and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). The process of quality evaluation, development of the pilot questionnaire, and preliminary results are reported.

Methods: Physicians from seven oncology groups developed medical record abstraction measures based on practice guidelines and consensus-supported indicators of quality care.