CMS’ Oncology Care Model program is bringing bundled payments to cancer care. With drug costs so high and hard to control, the 195 participating practices will have to figure out other ways to control costs if they want to beat financial benchmarks and earn bonuses.

This summer, CMS launched what might be its most ambitious alternative payment model to date. The federal health care agency’s aspirations for its Oncology Care Model (OCM) are sky high: Transformation of cancer treatment through more comprehensive patient and care management while simultaneously controlling the cost of all services though bundled payments for chemotherapy episodes lasting six months.

The new oncology model encompasses virtually all cancers treated with chemotherapy and all stages of those cancers. This is not a knock on other specialties, but the complexities of selecting the best chemotherapy agents for cancer patients—balancing efficacy, toxicity and an individual patient’s response—exceed those of CMS’ other bundled payment programs for cardiac care and hip and knee replacement. On top of the clinical issues and guidelines, physicians are supposed to generate savings in a circumstance where the price and expenditures for cancer drugs are unpredictable and difficult if not impossible to manage.

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