Background
As you may know, ASCO offers a number of innovative quality improvement programs and promotes the value of quality cancer care.
QOPI®: The Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) was designed by a group of ASCO-affiliated medical oncologists as a voluntary program to assess and improve processes of care in oncology practices, and over the past 10 years 780 practices in the United States have participated. ASCO is working to make these quality programs available outside the United States. QOPI is currently available in the following countries: all countries in the European Union, Argentina, Brazil, India, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, and we plan to continue to add to this list of countries in the future.
QOPI provides a system for practices to measure their care processes against established measures of care quality using abstracted medical records. These measures are based on ASCO guidelines and expert consensus. A practice submits a limited data set of medical records to the QOPI database using a structured, secure online patient report form.
ASCO analyzes the results and report the findings back to the practice. By participating in QOPI, oncology practices receive reports that compare their practice with more than 180 established measures of cancer care quality. These measures are based on ASCO guidelines and expert consensus. The analyzed QOPI quality reports are the primary benefit of QOPI participation. Reports are available within 4 weeks of the close of data collection, so practices can use data received for targeted improvement. For each quality measure, reports detail practice-specific data (and office-specific data, if collected at multiple sites) and comparative aggregate data.
Participation in QOPI is currently free of charge, but limited to practices with at least one active ASCO member. We are currently working on agreements to expand QOPI participation to other regions, including India and South America which requires a legal privacy review and a country specific agreement as well as a number of interested practices in the same country. The questions in this survey will help us determine when/if we can offer QOPI® to you.