Com­mu­ni­ty on­col­o­gy prac­tices are on the front lines of can­cer care, and they are fac­ing mount­ing pres­sures. En­sur­ing these prac­tices can con­tin­ue to thrive in­de­pen­dent­ly is es­sen­tial to sus­tain­ing pa­tient ac­cess to high-qual­i­ty, af­ford­able can­cer care in the com­mu­ni­ties where pa­tients live and work.

To­day, more than half of all can­cer pa­tients re­ceive care in in­de­pen­dent com­mu­ni­ty set­tings, ac­cord­ing to a 2023 study pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Clin­i­cal On­col­o­gy.¹ These prac­tices form the foun­da­tion of our can­cer care de­liv­ery sys­tem.

For pa­tients and their fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ty on­col­o­gy prac­tices en­able ac­cess to ad­vanced care with­in their lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, al­low­ing pa­tients to re­main em­bed­ded in their sup­port sys­tems and main­tain con­ti­nu­ity from di­ag­no­sis through sur­vivor­ship. As can­cer is in­creas­ing­ly man­aged as a chron­ic con­di­tion re­quir­ing long-term treat­ment and fol­low-up, that prox­im­i­ty is not just about con­ve­nience — it is an im­por­tant part of de­liv­er­ing con­sis­tent, pa­tient-cen­tered care.

For physi­cians and care teams, this en­ables care that is deeply in­formed by pa­tients’ clin­i­cal needs as well as the re­al­i­ties of their lives. Com­mu­ni­ty on­col­o­gists are of­ten present for di­ag­no­sis, treat­ment de­ci­sions, sur­vivor­ship and, in­creas­ing­ly, years of lon­gi­tu­di­nal care. That con­ti­nu­ity sup­ports more per­son­al­ized treat­ment de­ci­sions and re­flects a broad­er shift to­ward pa­tient-cen­tered, holis­tic mod­els of care that pri­or­i­tize both out­comes and ex­pe­ri­ence.

As health­care con­tin­ues to evolve, pre­serv­ing com­mu­ni­ty on­col­o­gy is es­sen­tial to build­ing a more sus­tain­able can­cer care sys­tem — one that bal­ances ac­cess, qual­i­ty and in­no­va­tion while keep­ing care root­ed where pa­tients live.

The on­col­o­gy treat­ment land­scape is evolv­ing rapid­ly, shaped by bio­mark­er-dri­ven ther­a­pies, in­creas­ing­ly com­plex clin­i­cal tri­als, ad­vanced di­ag­nos­tics, and the grow­ing pres­ence of AI-en­abled tools across care de­liv­ery.

This progress brings both op­por­tu­ni­ty and strain. While in­no­va­tion is ac­cel­er­at­ing, clin­i­cal com­plex­i­ty and sys­tem de­mands con­tin­ue to grow. On­col­o­gy is one of the most ac­tive ar­eas of clin­i­cal re­search, yet op­er­a­tional­iz­ing in­no­va­tion in­to rou­tine, re­al-world care re­mains chal­leng­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in in­de­pen­dent com­mu­ni­ty set­tings. In ad­di­tion to adopt­ing new ther­a­pies and treat­ment path­ways, prac­tices must man­age evolv­ing re­im­burse­ment mod­els, reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty risks, staffing con­straints, and ris­ing op­er­a­tional costs. Physi­cians are trained to di­ag­nose, treat and coun­sel pa­tients, yet the de­mands of de­liv­er­ing mod­ern can­cer care in­creas­ing­ly ex­tend be­yond the clin­i­cal set­ting and in­to a grow­ing lay­er of ad­min­is­tra­tive and op­er­a­tional com­plex­i­ty.

The ex­pec­ta­tion is not sim­ply to keep up with in­no­va­tion, but to in­cor­po­rate it safe­ly, con­sis­tent­ly and at scale. Com­mu­ni­ty on­col­o­gy prac­tices are un­der grow­ing pres­sure to mod­ern­ize while de­liv­er­ing high-qual­i­ty care with­out dis­rup­tion. Do­ing so re­quires in­fra­struc­ture and sup­port that ab­sorb op­er­a­tional com­plex­i­ty be­fore it reach­es the clin­ic, re­duc­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tive bur­den that is dri­ving burnout, so physi­cians can fo­cus on what they do best: car­ing for pa­tients.

McKesson plays a cen­tral role in sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ty on­col­o­gy by help­ing in­de­pen­dent prac­tices man­age the ad­min­is­tra­tive com­plex­i­ty sur­round­ing mod­ern can­cer care. Through The US On­col­o­gy Net­work (The Net­work), a net­work of in­de­pen­dent, com­mu­ni­ty-based on­col­o­gy prac­tices, McKesson pro­vides in­fra­struc­ture, tech­nol­o­gy and op­er­a­tional sup­port that en­ables prac­tices to de­liv­er high-qual­i­ty care while main­tain­ing full clin­i­cal au­ton­o­my.

That sup­port helps re­duce the bur­den of man­ag­ing re­im­burse­ment, da­ta and work­flow de­mands, al­low­ing care teams to stay fo­cused on pa­tients. It al­so helps prac­tices adopt new ther­a­pies, ex­pand ac­cess to clin­i­cal tri­als and nav­i­gate the grow­ing com­plex­i­ty of bio­mark­er-dri­ven care with­out dis­rupt­ing day-to-day op­er­a­tions.

Those ca­pa­bil­i­ties al­so ex­tend in­to clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment through part­ner­ships with Sarah Can­non Re­search In­sti­tute (SCRI), along with re­al-world da­ta and ev­i­dence plat­forms from On­ta­da and Geno­space. These ef­forts help ac­cel­er­ate tri­al ac­cess, sup­port pa­tient iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and gen­er­ate in­sights from the com­mu­ni­ty set­tings where most can­cer care hap­pens.

As on­col­o­gy in­no­va­tion con­tin­ues to ac­cel­er­ate, strength­en­ing the in­fra­struc­ture that sup­ports com­mu­ni­ty prac­tices will be es­sen­tial to en­sur­ing new ther­a­pies can reach pa­tients in a time­ly and eq­ui­table way.

At the Amer­i­can So­ci­ety of Clin­i­cal On­col­o­gy (AS­CO) An­nu­al Meet­ing, a con­sis­tent theme has emerged: the next era of can­cer care will be de­fined not on­ly by sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery, but by how ef­fec­tive­ly those ad­vances are im­ple­ment­ed in re­al-world set­tings.

This shift is putting in­creased pres­sure on crit­i­cal points in the care jour­ney, from bio­mark­er test­ing and clin­i­cal tri­al match­ing to the use of dig­i­tal tools in every­day work­flows.

The sci­ence of on­col­o­gy is ad­vanc­ing quick­ly, but the abil­i­ty to op­er­a­tional­ize that progress re­mains un­even. The chal­lenge is no longer on­ly what is pos­si­ble, but what can be de­liv­ered con­sis­tent­ly across care set­tings.

Ad­dress­ing this chal­lenge will re­quire con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture, ed­u­ca­tion and op­er­a­tional sup­port that re­flects how care is de­liv­ered in com­mu­ni­ty on­col­o­gy. For many com­mu­ni­ty prac­tices, hav­ing the sup­port of trust­ed part­ners such as The Net­work that op­er­ate across di­verse set­tings will play a crit­i­cal role in trans­lat­ing sci­en­tif­ic progress in­to sus­tain­able, pa­tient-cen­tered care — close to home.

Ex­plore how McKesson sup­ports com­mu­ni­ty on­col­o­gy prac­tices.

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