Value-Based Care Leaders: Oncology Needs Its Own Playbook
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Thyme Care
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Why Value-Based Care Leaders Need a Strategy Specific to Oncology
Oncology is one of the highest-cost and fastest-growing specialty areas—yet too often, it's folded into a generic, one-size-fits-all value-based care (VBC) strategy. While most provider groups already have some form of value-based or population health strategy in place, these strategies do not always include a framework that reflects the clinical, operational, and financial realities of treating this uniquely complex disease. The needs, risks, and drivers in cancer care differ from those in other specialties.
To succeed in today’s value-based landscape, provider groups must take a different approach—one that addresses the oncology-specific cost drivers, care delivery challenges, and patient support needs. Without a dedicated focus on the levers that truly move the needle in cancer care, even well-established VBC programs can fall short on total cost of care or critical quality measures.
Clinical complexity
Cancer is not a single disease — it’s hundreds. Each cancer type comes with its own diagnosis, staging, treatment pathways, and patterns of resource use. Oncology treatment plans are highly complex, with clinical pathways and regimens that are constantly evolving due to the rapid pace of drug innovation and shifting clinical protocols. This continues to drive up the cost of cancer care for both providers and patients. In 2024 alone, there were 70 FDA indications approved in oncology, 24 new-to-market oncology drugs, and 1 in 4 were accelerating approval.
Compounding the complexity, many patients with cancer present with comorbidities, psychosocial needs, and barriers to care like transportation or food insecurity. While oncology has numerous treatment pathways, these tend to focus on drug regimens rather than the full care journey. The sheer volume of treatment options and the rapid pace of clinical change require constant adaptation by provider teams.
Operational burden
Cancer care places a significant operational burden on provider groups, with staff frequently pulled away from direct clinical care to manage unmet social needs, coordination for appointments across specialties, and the ripple effects of avoidable emergency visits. Unmanaged symptoms and complications often lead patients to the emergency department—many times unnecessarily. Social determinants of health (SDOH), including transportation, housing insecurity, and financial toxicity, are deeply intertwined with the cancer journey, yet the lack of systematic SDOH data collection across oncology settings makes it difficult to proactively identify at-risk populations and intervene effectively. Plus, handoffs between multiple specialties (e.g. oncology, surgery, radiology, palliative care) can create coordination gaps, and oncology care teams are stretched thin, juggling both clinical and non-clinical tasks such as SDOH needs and psychosocial concerns.
This strain leads to staff burnout, reduced staff capacity, and costly breakdowns in care continuity. In a 2024 study, 18% of oncologists considered leaving medicine due to the severity of burnout. Traditional VBC models rarely account for these challenges, and if they do, may burden provider groups with even more to manage due to the lack of infrastructure to support true transformation in oncology.
Infrastructure gaps
Most value-based care programs were built with chronic conditions in mind—not specifically oncology. As a result, provider groups are often understaffed when it comes to oncology-trained care managers, oncology-specific population management platforms, symptom triage tools, or patient engagement strategies tailored to patients with cancer. Even within existing oncology value-based care models, the economic structure can make it challenging to fund the technology tools and interdisciplinary team needed to have impact.
Without the resourcing to support robust symptom management and oncology-specific transitions of care, patients default to emergency care and face high readmission risks—eroding both quality benchmarks and financial performance.
How Oncology-Focused VBC Is a Powerful Strategic Lever for Provider Groups
Oncology is one of the most high-impact areas for value-based care transformation. Because cancer care is resource-intensive and involves multiple specialties and co-morbidities, even small improvements in coordination and support– like early symptom triage, timely follow-ups, or consistent care team support– can have outsized results in cost and quality.
However, many provider groups lack the oncology-specific metrics, tools, and staff capacity to execute on these opportunities. Most EHRs don't surface population health data like stage-at-diagnosis, frailty, avoidable ED visits, or timely treatment starts—data that’s critical to improving cancer outcomes and managing costs.
Even in provider groups with robust oncology programs, support often varies by cancer type, stage, or acuity. Technology alone—such as EHR alerts or patient portals—can’t fill the gap. What provider groups need is a dedicated, oncology-specialized partner who integrates - not duplicates -seamlessly into their existing system to deliver personalized, scalable wraparound support.
Oncology VBC Deserves Full Strategic Attention—Now
Your oncology value-based care strategy should be central to your population health strategy. Even the strongest in-house teams struggle to meet the demands of cancer care today. The growing costs, complexity, and opportunities are too big to ignore.
That’s where Thyme Care comes in.
We bring deep oncology expertise and fully integrated support to provider groups – helping manage cancer populations with confidence, compassion, and measurable results. We act as an extension of your provider care team, complementing your efforts.
Deep oncology expertise, offering proactive support to every patient:
- Thyme Care is available to anyone with cancer, regardless of cancer type.
- Our Care Team consists of:
- 400+ fully staffed, oncology-trained Care Team members
- 112 oncology nurses
- 20 specialized pods, where patients engage with a consistent care team throughout their care journey, fostering deeper, more trusted relationships.
High-quality, efficient care
- 24/7 support from our Care Team, available through Thyme Care Connect, our self-service app for patients
- Social needs (e.g. transportation, housing, food)
- Proactive symptom management through patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) helps catch problems early—before they escalate to an ED visit. 72% of our members respond to proactive patient-reported outcome surveys (ePROs), compared to an industry benchmark of 41%.
- Transitions of care program to support post-discharge needs, improving readmission rates and patient recovery.
Elevate patient experience
Thyme Care ensures that patients have a dedicated point of contact, ongoing check-ins, and practical support tailored to their needs through their cancer journey. The result is increased trust, engagement, and loyalty, which keeps patients in-network and improves outcomes.
And it works. As seen in our Impact Report:
- 9/10 patient satisfaction rate
- 88% of patients have reported feeling more supported since engaging with Thyme Care.