The value of cancer care coordination.

What a delay costs patients, what Medicare pays for coordination, and where the avoidable spend sits. Every figure on this page comes from published research or CMS, and none of it is an Arca result.

+6–9%
added risk of death for every four weeks a cancer treatment is delayedBMJ, 2020
$110
Medicare's monthly coordination payment per patient in an oncology episodeCMS, 2025
45%
of patients starting intravenous treatment have an emergency visit or admission within six monthsJCO CCI, 2025

A treatment delay is a clinical event.

The largest analysis of treatment delay, 34 studies and 1.27 million patients, found that waiting raised mortality in 13 of 17 treatment indications.

Waiting for a referral, an authorization, or an appointment all counts toward the delay.

Medicare pays for coordination, and raised the rate 57% in 2025.

In the Enhancing Oncology Model, a practice receives a monthly payment for each patient in a chemotherapy episode, and the payment requires it to document the services it provides. Since 2024, navigation is also billable fee-for-service, with no practitioner, frequency, or duration limits.

$160Oncology Care ModelPer patient per month, 2016 to 2022
$70Enhancing Oncology ModelFrom July 2023
$110Enhancing Oncology ModelFrom January 2025, up 57%
$79Principal Illness NavigationPer hour, billable fee-for-service since 2024

CMS, OCM and EOM Monthly Enhanced Oncology Services rates; CY2024 Physician Fee Schedule final rule, Principal Illness Navigation (G0023, G0024).

Coordination by added staff saved 2.1%, less than it cost.

From 2016 to 2022 the Oncology Care Model paid practices $160 per patient per month to coordinate care, mostly through added staff. Episodes came in $616 lower than comparison, which did not cover the $960 the model paid per episode.

The arithmetic changes when each patient costs less to coordinate.

Abt Associates, Oncology Care Model final evaluation.

The avoidable spend sits in hospital care during treatment.

16%of a six-month chemotherapy episode's spending is acute hospital care, by the model's final year.
45%of patients starting intravenous treatment had an emergency visit or admission within six months.
19%of hospital admissions were judged potentially avoidable on clinician review.

The preventable share varies by study and by who reviews the case, so a program should measure against its own baseline.

Abt Associates, OCM final evaluation (acute-care share of episode payments). Perrin et al., JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics, 2025 (2,922 patients). Brooks GA et al., J Clin Oncol, 2014 (201 admissions, GI cancers).

What a program on Arca measures.

Targets are agreed before signing, against the program's own baseline, and measured from each patient's actual care.

Days from diagnosis to first treatmentBy handoff, against the program's own baseline.
Care gaps closed on timeEvery gap has an owner and a due date from the first day.
Emergency visits and admissions during treatmentPer 100 patients in treatment, against the prior year.
Pathway adherenceA documented pathway status on every treatment plan.
Care plans documentedThe share of enrolled patients with a current care plan.

The economics of cancer care coordination.

Seven pages on what Medicare pays for coordination, what the staffed version returned, and where the avoidable spend sits, with every figure sourced. Enter a work email and the link arrives in your inbox. All guides and whitepapers

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For risk-bearing oncology groups, health plans that delegate oncology risk, and cancer program leaders.

Run these numbers on your own program.

Send us your volumes and your current diagnosis-to-treatment interval if you know it. We reply with the same arithmetic run on your figures, sources attached.

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