OneOncology Selects Smirta, OncoSmart Platform to Optimize Scheduling Operations

OneOncology, a national network of community oncology practices, has selected Smirta, a North Brunswick, N.J., based digital health company as a preferred vendor to provide its OncoSmart oncology infusion schedule optimization platform to the network of physician practices.

The OneOncology network, now covering more than 300 sites of care, is a partnership created by independent community oncologists to strengthen practices delivering high-value cancer care services. The partnership offers centralized services for data sharing, clinical pathways, and technology support, among other services.

OncoSmart is a data-driven digital transformation platform that Smirta developed in collaboration with Tennessee Oncology, a OneOncology practice. According to a statement from OneOncology, “The platform optimizes resources, increases capacity, and simplifies the complexities of cancer treatment clinic operations.”

The A.I.-driven platform features modules for clinic management, optimization, nurse assignment, business intelligence, and resource management, which allow infusion centers to better manage critical clinical resources and deliver high quality cancer care.

“Understandably, every patient wants to be the first to get their infusion and every doctor wants to start their day early,” said Jeff Patton, MD, CEO, OneOncology. “Consequently, we found our clinics contending with a tremendous, daily bottleneck through the afternoon. Smirta’s OncoSmart platform has been invaluable in establishing a superior scheduling process to smooth out the day and boost patient care by flattening the utilization curve so that the ratio of clinical staff to patients remains consistent and ramps more evenly throughout the day.”

“We are thrilled to partner with Smirta and sponsor their technology, which will exponentially improve the standard of care and the scheduling metrics of cancer treatment clinics nationwide,” Patton said.

Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, chief medical officer for Tennessee Oncology, added: “The Smirta team are amazing to work with. They tailor their software to precisely what we need for our clinics and staff and have been incredibly responsive during the onboarding process. The software itself is very intuitive. Outside of the clinic level where it helps with treatment room capacity and nurse assignments, it also offers a system-wide look across the company, allowing us to see how all of our clinics are doing in terms of overtime, staffing, volume, and so on.”

The platform was created to support a diverse group of clinics with varying sizes and volume, as well as to optimize all service types. Through this technology, Schleicher said, “We really get to understand which clinics need help through a birds-eye view of how the company’s doing from a patient experience and staff experience standpoint.”

“Cancer care is inherently complex, with a confluence of problems manifesting most pronouncedly during peak times,” said Ram Iyengar, CEO of Smirta. “Through our OncoSmart platform, we can address and neutralize preventable bottlenecks, nursing attrition, and increased operational expenses while significantly improving patient satisfaction and quality of care. We are proud to partner with OneOncology in our combined mission to ensure the best possible treatment for cancer patients through enabling the most supportive, productive setting for all clinic staff.”

Smirta has also already worked with another OneOncology partner practice, Piedmont Cancer Institute. Stephanie Braatz, chief clinical officer for the Atlanta-based cancer, said: “The Smirta team has been so responsive and are very easy to work with. Their OncoSmart platform offers tools that streamline our infusion center operations, and their optimization tool has helped us effectively utilize our resources by balancing the patient load across different types of service.”

“The business intelligence tool has identified bottlenecks, such as provider schedules, and has helped us find solutions to fix them,” Braatz said. “The

nurse assignments tool has tremendously, and positively, affected the reduction of manual effort while showing us a view of the treatment room that we simply weren’t able to see before. The entire team and suite of tools have added value.”