Lightening the Load: How Thyme Care Supports Oncology Providers

Providers and their teams are doing remarkable work every day to deliver compassionate care to people with cancer, but the system does not make it easy to keep up. With rising patient volumes, growing administrative demands, and limited staffing resources, oncology providers are increasingly asked to do more with less. The reality is that many critical services, like patient navigation and care coordination, fall outside the scope of traditional fee-for-service reimbursement. Even when providers attempt to bill using codes like PCM, CCM, or PIN, the economics rarely make sense — meaning providers are often fighting just to break even while delivering essential care.

These challenges put pressure on provider teams and threaten the sustainability of high-quality cancer care. But there is a better way forward—one that supports, not replaces, the incredible work provider groups are already doing while saving teams hundreds of hours in administrative time. Let’s explore the pressures oncology providers face today and how wraparound oncology navigation can help alleviate them.

The Challenge: Provider Groups Are Stretched Thin

Even the most dedicated provider care teams are struggling to keep up as they juggle competing priorities under a system that is making oncology care delivery harder to sustain:

1. Administrative Tasks are Distracting from Direct Patient Care

Too often, valuable staff time is consumed by time-intensive administrative tasks—rather than direct patient care. In fact, 93% of providers report care delays due to prior authorization requirements, which disproportionately affect complex populations like those with cancer.

With staffing shortages across nursing, care coordination, and administrative roles, this burden doesn’t just burn out teams—it creates real delays in care delivery and increases costs.

2. Gaps in Care Are Leading to Avoidable Escalations

Even with structured care plans, patients need support between appointments—whether to help manage side effects or to obtain access to reliable transportation. However, many provider groups don’t have the resources or time to offer this kind of always-on, between-visit support.

This results in patients turning to urgent care or the ER when issues arise that could have been avoided, driving up costs and disrupting care continuity. Ultimately, this negatively impacts the patient experience, trust in their care team, and overall outcomes.

3. Financial Pressures Are Threatening Sustainability

The transition to value-based care brings promise, but it can take 3-5 years to see meaningful cost savings offset significant investments for staffing and infrastructure. At the same time, financial margins are tightening – Medicare Advantage (MA) plans reimburse hospitals roughly 5% less than Traditional Medicare, which already pays below the cost of care.²  For provider groups already operating on thin margins, this creates consistent financial pressure, especially when caring for a more complex population like oncology. Add this to staff recruitment challenges and rising operational expenses, and it’s easy to see why so many provider groups are feeling the pinch.

How Thyme Care’s Care Team Reduces Workload and Drives Results

Our oncology-trained Care Team offers patients 24/7 support between visits—at no cost to them—while helping your staff focus on delivering high-quality, in-person care.

We don’t replace the trusted relationships you’ve built with your patients. Instead, we help reinforce them by handling time-consuming administrative tasks so that you can focus on direct patient care. 

In 2024 alone, Thyme Care saved one provider group partner ~2000 hours by reducing administrative burden and supporting patients between visits.

That translates into fewer interruptions, less burnout, and more space for your care teams to focus on the complex decision-making and hands-on care only they can provide. Plus, here are other promising results of our interventions in patient care:

• Reducing acute care utilization: We use ePROs to monitor symptoms every 2 weeks for patients experiencing high symptom burden.

  • 40% relative risk reduction in ED visits associated with completed ePRO surveys 

• Driving down readmission: Dedicated nurse outreach post-discharge ensures patients don’t fall through the cracks.

  • 96% of patients received Thyme Care Nurse outreach following a discharge event

• Supporting patients with social needs: Our Care Team addresses needs outside clinical scope — transportation, food insecurity, financial toxicity, etc.

  • 82% of patients with a social need had action taken by Thyme Care to address the need

• Facilitating advance care planning: Oncology-trained nurses initiate and document sensitive goals-of-care conversations.

  • 67% of patients with advanced cancer completed an advance care planning conversation with Thyme Care

Oncology Care Support Built to Complement Your Provider Group’s Efforts

Thyme Care works in lockstep with provider care teams to complement, not duplicate, their efforts. The result is more coordinated care, reduced operational burden, and a smoother experience for patients with cancer. Here’s how Thyme Care works alongside provider teams to enhance their efforts:

• Seamless workflows: Thyme Care embeds provider communication and care preferences directly into Thyme Box, our care management platform, to ensure every patient interaction aligns with their workflows. With secure EHR access, we have real-time visibility into medical history, treatment plans, and provider details for the full patient picture. We regularly share care coordination notes to keep your team informed.

• Unified patient communication: In all co-branded materials, we position Thyme Care as an extension of the patient’s provider team, setting clear expectations with them around who we are and how we fit in.

• Cohesive patient experience: We align with your care goals and preferences across our four core interventions—symptom monitoring, transitions of care, advance care planning, and social determinants of health. By addressing these areas proactively, we reduce the number of urgent calls to your clinic, improve outcomes, and make it easier for patients to navigate their journey with confidence.

What Provider Groups Gain from Partnering with Thyme Care

The impact of partnering with Thyme Care is meaningful and measurable. Oncology provider groups that work with us gain back time, freeing up their teams to focus on what matters most: delivering high-quality cancer care. We lighten the load by reducing administrative burden, cutting down on escalations and documentation, and handling non-clinical tasks.

Patients benefit, too. With 24/7 access to compassionate, oncology-specific support between visits, they feel more cared for, more confident, and more connected—as reflected in our 9/10 patient satisfaction rating.

Interested in learning how Thyme Care could support your provider group? Let’s chat - reach our team here.