Introducing the National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s New CEO

In this exclusive interview, Crystal Denlinger, MD, announces her new role as the CEO of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN). Denlinger discusses her new responsibilities, the ever-changing landscape of cancer care, and challenges facing the field of oncology.

The following is a transcript of her remarks:

One of the things that people recognize with NCCN is that we are an organization that puts out clinical practice guidelines, but you may not necessarily know as much about the CEO role.

In terms of responsibilities, the NCCN CEO is responsible for NCCN’s overall organizational strategy and alignment, as well as engagement with our member institutions (we now have 33), our board of directors, as well as various external stakeholders, whether they be payers, the pharmaceutical industry, patient advocacy groups, and the general public.

NCCN operates under a strategic plan, and it’s really the responsibility of the chief executive officer to ensure that this plan gets operationalized across the organization in accordance with our mission, our vision, and our core values. That’s what I hope to continue to do as the incoming CEO.

In terms of some of my key objectives or goals for NCCN, I believe that NCCN is an amazing organization and alliance of leading academic cancer centers that is doing really important work by providing the most comprehensive set of resources for achieving optimal cancer-related outcomes at the patient, provider, payer, and policymaker levels.

Our mission is to improve and facilitate quality, effective, equitable, and accessible cancer care, so that all patients can live better lives. And we work to define and advance high-quality, high-value patient-centered cancer care globally through our clinical practice guidelines and the derivative products, as well as our other programs and resources.

We know that data has shown that guideline-adherent care improves cancer-related outcomes while lowering costs and decreasing disparities. One key objective is to continue to expand and update the clinical practice guidelines to meet the needs of our payers, providers, policymakers, and patients. We’re working to continuously expand our clinical practice guidelines and the Compendia libraries, with a focus on pediatric cancers. We’re working on expanding and updating our guidelines for patients through the NCCN Foundation. We’re working to digitize our guidelines to meet the needs of our various users, and we’re continuing to ensure that our content is accessible and useful on a global scale.

Another objective is really to engage and support our member institutions in their missions through things like the oncology research program, our clinical and educational resources, and through our various committees.

Finally, we’re working to advance equity and accessibility through our efforts in policy and advocacy, as well as through the piloting of the Health Equity Report Card and our convening of the DEI [Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion] Directors Forum, where organizations can share best practices.

In terms of challenges, I think there are a number of challenges that face the field of oncology, and therefore NCCN as a purveyor of appropriate care.

One of the biggest challenges that I can attest to personally as a practicing oncologist is that the volume of data being generated and the ways in which the field is changing is constant. People ask me all the time why I like being an oncologist, and I tell them that it’s a really exciting time to be an oncologist because of the new data and scientific discovery that’s improving cancer outcomes every day — new things come out. But keeping up with that data as a clinician — or for that matter as a payer or policymaker, or even someone who’s a patient or caregiver living with cancer — can be really hard.

This is where the NCCN guidelines and our derivative products, like the guidelines for patients and the various Compendia products, can serve their greatest purpose. By continuously updating guidelines on pace with the ever-changing evidence, NCCN can be an evergreen resource for the various stakeholders to remain knowledgeable regarding what appropriate care is in cancer. Every year that I’ve been part of NCCN, there have been between 180 and 200 guideline updates across the library. That just goes to show the pace with which cancer therapy is changing, and ensuring that everyone in the oncology community has a trusted resource that reflects these changes is one of NCCN’S strengths.

We succeed because of the engagement and dedication of both our member institutions and our headquarters staff. In the guidelines program alone, over 1,700 member institution panel members contributed over 44,000 hours to guidelines work. And that doesn’t take into account other faculty and staff who participate in our committees or panels or participate in an annual institutional review process in which faculty at our member institutions review and provide comments for consideration during the annual guidelines update process.

NCCN regularly tracks drug shortages of important anti-cancer agents, given the impact the drug shortages can have on access to quality and efficient and effective cancer care.

Earlier this year, we actually surveyed our member institutions about the current cisplatin and carboplatin shortages, and found that the shortages did impact care, but mostly by impacting the time to initiation of treatment due to additional authorization requirements for alternative therapies when one of the platinum agents was scarce or unavailable.

NCCN put out a statement on mitigating the impact of anti-cancer drug shortages, which calls upon all stakeholders in the oncology community to do their part to mitigate this problem and the downstream impact on patients. This includes ensuring that regulatory agencies and pharmaceutical industries provide environments that are able to secure a steady supply of core drugs, and that the payer community puts patients first and provides flexible and efficient systems to allow for alternative guideline-concordant therapies that replace the short anti-cancer drug when it may be unavailable or in shortage without requiring burdensome prior authorization requirements.

We recognize that this really is a multi-pronged problem that really requires a systems approach for an effective long-term solution. We’re engaging in conversations with other stakeholders to work to address this issue. We hope that everyone that is part of the oncology community can work to ensure that drug shortages don’t happen and affect cancer care.

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