Today, we are announcing that Color’s Virtual Cancer Clinic has become the first virtual cancer organization to earn the ASCO Certified designation, the certification of the top level of quality and safety standards in cancer care from the American Society of Clinical Oncology. It's a meaningful milestone, not just for Color, but for what's now possible in cancer care.

High-quality cancer care is traditionally deeply constrained by a person's geography. The scarcity of oncology expertise, combined with the complexity of cancer care, means many patients do not receive the best possible care. Color is reinventing the cancer model with the first national-scale, state-of-the art virtual cancer Center of Excellence, unconstrained by geography. 

Today, one of the world’s top authorities in cancer care is recognizing our work and setting a new standard for virtual cancer care.

For patients, this standard, ASCO Certified, is a trust signal. It means the care they are receiving has been independently verified against the same standards the oncology community uses to define excellence. It means the right clinical protocols, the right safety practices, the right support services, and the right accountability for outcomes. And it means that it happens consistently, across the full arc of a cancer journey.

Why we built Color's Virtual Cancer Clinic

In 2021, we started building Color's Virtual Cancer Clinic, powered by Color Medical’s 50-state, oncologist-led medical group. Our observation at the time was simple: cancer was on track to become the top cost driver of American healthcare, yet every cancer-focused service in the market was anchored in a traditional brick-and-mortar model, narrowly focused on navigation through broken care, or a reactive second-opinion model. 

Our program and clinic have grown significantly since then. This year, we are serving over 1.2 million people through this cancer clinic. In the age of AI, and amid fundamental shifts in access to care, cancer management needs to be, and can be, reinvented. 

What does being ASCO Certified mean?

ASCO is the leading professional organization for oncology physicians and specialists, and its quality and safety standards are global benchmarks. Research presented at ASCO’s meetings often leads to major breakthroughs in cancer treatment. ASCO Certifications is the organization’s flagship certification for oncology practices, built on the Oncology Medical Home (OMH) Standards, co-developed by ASCO and the Community Oncology Alliance. As the oncology field's most comprehensive, evidence-based benchmark for patient-centered cancer care, these standards go beyond “you adhere to standard processes” to measurement of real improvement of patient outcomes.

To earn certification, a practice must demonstrate full compliance with a rigorous set of standards spanning the entire patient journey, including availability and access to care; delivery of evidence-based medicine; comprehensive team-based care; quality improvement; patient engagement in shared decision-making about their cancer care; and goals of care, palliative, and end-of-life care discussions. Effectiveness is evaluated by measuring avoidable emergency room visits, guideline concordance of treatment, and patient experience. Performance is also assessed through in-depth, multi-day onsite surveys by ASCO's oncology quality leadership team.

For virtual care, ASCO created an additional set of standards covering telemedicine requirements, language access, connectivity, and importantly, formal coordination and collaboration with local treating oncologists. 

What a gold standard in virtual-first cancer care looks like

The certification of Color’s Virtual Cancer Clinic has two outcomes. First, it holds our virtual clinic to the same quality bar as the most respected brick-and-mortar cancer centers in the country. Second, it codifies care enhancements into the standards that are uniquely possible when the delivery model is virtual-first and focused on access.

Research consistently points to four modifiable drivers for better outcomes: (1) early, accurate, and expert diagnosis; (2) timely, well-coordinated, guideline-concordant treatment; (3) clinical trial access; and (4) proactive symptom management and supportive care. Color’s Virtual Cancer Clinic is unique in that we apply these drivers across the entire cancer journey: 

Before diagnosis. Virtual care can dramatically expand access to guidelines-based screening, earlier detection, and a faster, more coordinated path from an abnormal result to a definitive diagnosis and treatment plan. This is where some of the largest gains in outcomes and cost live, and it's the part of the journey most underserved by traditional settings.

During treatment. The service level patients experience gets a significant upgrade, with always-available clinical support, oversight through multidisciplinary expert case reviews that are proactive and continuous, and high-touch symptom and side effect management. Virtual care also expands supportive services that many traditional settings can’t offer, including oncology-specific mental health, oncology nutrition counseling, palliative care, physical medicine and rehabilitation, advanced care planning, and financial toxicity support. These services are all woven into a single experience and complement the in-person treating oncologist’s focus.

After treatment. The cancer journey doesn't end when treatment does. Survivorship, surveillance, late effects, and the emotional weight of what patients and families have been through all need ongoing support. Guideline-based survivorship care can help reduce the risk of complications, emergency room utilization, and late detection of recurrence. Virtual-first care makes living with cancer and new chronic conditions more manageable. 

The road ahead

We believe virtual specialty care providers like Color's Virtual Cancer Clinic will become a core part of every cancer patient's care team, working alongside traditional providers and providing types of care that in-person settings have never been well positioned to cover, such as proactive screening programs, always-on symptom management, complex survivorship care, and more. The question is no longer whether virtual-first specialty care belongs in oncology. It's how quickly it scales.

Being the first virtual clinic to earn ASCO Certification is a proud moment for our team and an important recognition of our scientific and clinical rigor. For patients and clinicians, this marks a turning point for high-quality virtual care partnerships. For employers and health plans, ASCO Certified virtual cancer care offers a scalable model to improve cancer outcomes and directly impact the levers driving the growing costs of cancer care. For us, the more important signal is what it says about where cancer care is headed. We are just getting started.