The Oncology Care Model and Initiation of Systemic Therapy for Cancer

The authors aimed to determine whether the Oncology Care Model (OCM) was associated with an increase in the initiation of systemic therapy for cancer among Medicare beneficiaries. Their findings revealed no significant increase in systemic therapy initiation for newly diagnosed cancers, but a notable decrease in initiation for patients with poor-prognosis cancers, alongside lower Medicare spending in this group. This suggests that the OCM may have led to more conservative treatment approaches without increasing systemic therapy use.