I participated in my first OneOncology leadership summit as Chief Operating Officer earlier this month in San Diego and left feeling energized about the meeting and our path forward. As the former CEO of United Urology Group (which joined forces with OneOncology last October) I have a unique perspective of how our strategy continues to evolve in incredibly positive ways.

Urology + Oncology + Radiation Oncology: A Powerful Platform

One of the most exciting developments we discussed in San Diego was our continued and accelerating integration with United Urology Group (UUG) as we continue to bring together a powerhouse platform for oncology, urology, and radiation oncology. Together, we are now the most sophisticated and scaled MSO in the country, offering comprehensive oncology and urologic services. This partnership is more than operational—it’s clinical.

As cancer care evolves and specialties continue to intertwine, helping our partner practices’ fantastic roster of clinicians deliver best in class patient care will always be our north star. Making care more innovative, seamless, and convenient for patients drives us. Urologists are no longer just performing procedures—they’re managing complex cancer patients alongside oncologists. Since 25-40% of UUG practice physicians’ patients are cancer patients, and ancillaries like pharmacy, radiation therapy, pathology, PET/CT, and chronic care management are increasingly important to both urology and oncology, the overlapping synergy is clear.

As Dr. Geoffrey Sklar, UUG’s Chief Medical Officer, put it at our panel discussion: “We’re no longer just cutting out cancer—we’re treating the whole patient.” This partnership allows us to deliver seamless, patient-centered care across the entire journey—from diagnosis to survivorship.

Harnessing AI to Improve Care

Another exciting discussion we held revolved around our AI strategy, which is already transforming how our practice partners deliver care and manage operations. From patient access to clinical analytics, AI is helping us unlock problems that were previously too complex or time-consuming.

Here are a few highlights we raised with our physician and practice partners:

AI-Powered Patient Experience: In partnership with multiple vendors, we are piloting AI capabilities at our partner practices as part of their contact center operations.  Proof of concepts that we are currently exploring include inbound and outbound calls, patient triage, appointment reminders, and billing outreach -- all with speed and accuracy. This initiative is designed to reduce administrative burden and improve patient satisfaction.

Fax Intelligence & EMR Integration: We’re testing AI tools that extract relevant clinical and administrative information from faxes, categorize it, and map it to appropriate EMR fields—saving time and reducing errors.

Drug Prior Authorization Automation: Through our partnerships with several Agentic AI vendors, we’re building agentic AI tools to help automate drug prior authorizations, a major pain point for practices. This includes work queue platforms and audit capabilities to ensure compliance and efficiency.

Precision Medicine Support: Our ProMPT tool uses decision analytics to help partner practice physicians interpret next-generation sequencing results and match patients with FDA-approved therapies—right at the point of care.

Databricks Partnership: As part of our analytics AI strategy, Databricks plays a pivotal role in streamlining how we ingest and abstract unstructured data across clinical and operational domains. Its unified data platform enables scalable processing of diverse data types—from clinical notes to genomic reports—allowing us to build robust abstraction pipelines that feed into our analytics engines and our RWE insights. Databricks also enhances our clinical trial matching capabilities by efficiently processing complex inclusion and exclusion criteria, helping partner practice physicians identify eligible patients faster and more accurately.

These innovations are not just about technology—they’re about empowering physicians to spend more time with patients and less time on paperwork. They’re about making care more personalized, more efficient, and more accessible.

The Public Policy Landscape

Public policy traditionally is one of the biggest challenges (and areas of opportunity) for community oncology.

Dr. David Eagle moderated a wide-ranging discussion that touched on how the future of oncology is increasingly shaped by legislation from Medicaid cuts and drug pricing reforms to PBM scrutiny and Medicare reimbursements.  

The policy panels are always one of the most well-attended panels we host, underscoring the importance our practice partners and their physicians place in staying informed and engaged in federal policy matters.  Whether it’s responding to prior authorization burdens, or preparing for the 2026 Physician Fee Schedule, our practice partners benefit from the collective expertise and advocacy power of the OneOncology network.

Best of ASCO Recap

Dr. Amit Patel moderated a panel discussion where Dr. Vasily Assikis, Dr. Trevor Feinstein, and Dr. Yelda Nouri each gave a thoughtful summary of the best in GU, Lung and Breast research from ASCO 2025. Each disease group leader broke down the research presented in Chicago and offered their take as to what was immediately practice changing.  For example, the treatment landscape for HER2+ metastatic breast cancer is shifting after more than a decade, with fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan plus pertuzumab emerging as the new first-line standard of care based on results from DESTINY-Breast09 . While this represents a practice-changing advance, important questions remain around long-term tolerability and what does integration with endocrine therapy look like.

Why These Conferences Matter

OneOncology’s summits are more than just updates—they’re a chance to connect, collaborate, and reinvigorate. The conversations in San Diego—between oncologists, urologists, administrators, and policy experts—highlighted the value of being part of a platform like OneOncology. We’re not just sharing best practices; we’re building a community.

As we look ahead to our annual meeting this fall in Nashville, I’m reminded of the words Dr. Patton recently shared from a departing practice leader about OneOncology: “You truly made a difference in bringing our practice back to life.” This statement is a testament to why we do what we do.

Together, we’re transforming care—one patient, one practice, one partnership at a time.

Go OneOncology!