At the recent Association of VA Hematology and Oncology (AVAHO) meeting in Denver, Colorado, Michael Hagan, MD, PhD, director of the VA National Radiation Oncology Program, outlined a new program designed to improve quality and standardize radiation oncology practice across VA. Hagan introduced Radiation Oncology Practice Assessment (ROPA), which pulls data from treatment and compares it to quality metrics.
Hagan outlined the various steps taken to build the information technology infrastructure for ROPA. The quality metrics were developed in conjunction with American Society of Radiation Oncology disease site-specific experts and other peer reviewers.
The ROPA tool provides VA access to a new data source. “ROPA gives us the ability to drill down to an individual data point to see why a patient result does not meet quality measures,” Hagan told the AVAHO attendees. In FY 2018, ROPA will provide a scorecard to each practice for each case, comparing local results against quality measures. The VA hopes that ROPA will help identify outliers and alert service chiefs of areas, “where there is room for improvement.”
The new technology will allow radiation oncology to see trends across VHA, confront challenges, and potentially realign resources. So far, the data are promising. According to Hagan in initial analyses, VA providers had higher scores overall than did community providers. In early analyses, ROPA produced 11,030 observations across 51 quality metrics, which included 489 patients at 11 sites. Quality measures fall off with follow-up but are useful for treatment.
