The next step

Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.

--Ray Bradbury

D.A. Freccia: You're a pretty smart fella.

Joe Moore: Ah, not that smart.

D.A. Freccia: [If] you're not that smart, how'd you figure it out?

Joe Moore: I tried to imagine a fella smarter than myself. Then I tried to think, "What would he do?"

--Gene Hackman, Heist (2001)

It’s smarter to be lucky than it’s lucky to be smart.

--Charlemagne “War is a Science” Pippin (1972)

I don’t think I’m jumping off a cliff – and I know I don’t have any wings, at least not yet – but I am taking a leap into something new, different, and exciting, and I want to share the news with all of you today. Beginning December 3, 2014, I will be leaving my current position in the breast cancer program at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins and beginning a new full-time position as Medical Director of the Institute for Quality of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Alexandria, VA. I will help lead and support a number of key programs that make up ASCO’s quality portfolio, including the Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI), the QOPI Certification Program, and the revolutionary and ambitious CancerLinQ project, among other ASCO quality initiatives. The ASCO Board of Directors and CEO Dr. Allen Lichter recently made the decision to bring on board to the ASCO staff a physician to provide medical oversight for this key area. I am deeply honored to be the inaugural person selected for this position.

ASCO’s vision for the future of oncology, well articulated in the 2012 document “Shaping the Future of Oncology: Envisioning Cancer Care in 2030” is one that really resonates with me. ASCO believes that all patients with cancer should have access to high quality care and that the information learned from every patient should accelerate the progress against cancer. ASCO has identified health information technology, particularly the ability to collect and analyze vast amounts of big data, as a key driver to achieve this vision. I couldn’t agree more. For the past 23 years that I have practiced clinical oncology, patients and families have come to me for my expertise in what is often the most overwhelming crisis of their lives. They may be full of fear and anxiety, but they are all hopeful for cure, while expecting compassion and respect. As a clinician, I know that the only thing that really matters is the needs of that patient in the exam room across from me, and my primary responsibility is to help them navigate the shortcomings of our byzantine and often-insensitive healthcare system, to deliver to them the right diagnosis and the right treatment, based on the best possible evidence and shaped by their own preferences and values. To do that, I need access to data, information, and knowledge of a complexity and quantity that was unthinkable when I graduated from medical school in the 1980s. To get this access, oncologists need tools that can’t be discerned in the Google searches and social media streams of today, as critical as the Internet is to medicine – let alone the medical libraries and Index Medicus of the last century! ASCO’s rich portfolio of quality programs, which started with QOPI, an oncologist-led, practice-based quality assessment and improvement program that launched in 2002, through today’s eQOPI and the growing library of practice guidelines, to tomorrow’s CancerLinQ rapid learning system, will continue to be foundational in providing oncologists with some of these needed resources.

I’m joining ASCO now as a full time employee because I’m passionate and optimistic about the future of our field, and I want to devote the rest of my career to enabling this change. I’ve not been blessed with unique or extraordinary vision, but I think I can see what it is going to take. We need to create a world where medical practice consistently reflects unfettered access to meaningful data; where clinical care and discovery co-exist and enrich each other; where oncologists discover new knowledge not only from the 3% of patients who bravely enroll on clinical trials but from the routine care experiences of all; where the documentation of such care experiences is freed from proprietary electronic systems – currently shoehorned into the rough and inflexible mandates of the meaningful use requirements (as necessary a first step as they were) –  and shared freely by all; where delivery is not constantly undermined by the specter of the perverse incentives of quantity-based reimbursement particularly “buy and bill;” where the amazing advances in panomics are allowed to flourish and inform today’s care processes and not exist only as vague promises of “precision medicine;” and where patient-centered care is something we all are proud to deliver, not just to satisfy next month’s Press-Ganey surveys, but because it represents the fundamental passion and dedication of our profession as physicians.

Will I be able to do all of these things as an ASCO Medical Director? Lordy, I’m going to need a lot of help! I’ve experienced oncology in both private practice and academics, so I know all too well the challenges of transformation and how disappointment oft rules. But I think I’m smart enough to associate myself with some very smart people, and I’ve been lucky enough in my career – blessed in fact – that I’ve been able to enjoy a wonderful, fulfilling practice environment and the collegiality and camaraderie of superb colleagues everywhere I have been. So I think this “leap” – from the familiarity of a single institution to a visionary, mission-driven organization like ASCO and this work blending quality, clinical medicine, and information science – is not just the next step for my professional development but something that feels positive, natural, and just right. I’ll build the wings later.