Patient registries are very much like human beings and we strive for them to be “healthy.” Like watching a child grow from infancy to adulthood, a registry’s size (volume), knowledge base, interaction, and impact to the organization grow and evolve throughout its life cycle. Humans hope to fulfill a purpose in life and hospitals invest in patient registries with goals for registry participation. Even registries that…

Public Law 102-515, Cancer Registries Amendment Act (1992) requires all practitioners and facilities to collect and report cancer data on all patients diagnosed and/or treated for in situ and/or invasive cancers, as well as benign neoplasms of the central nervous system.  With all the responsibilities on the plates of practitioners (and the facilities that employee them), how do they manage to stay compliant with public health…

In the United States alone, there were 48,183 deaths resulting from suicide, compared to an estimated 1,700,000 suicide attempts in 2021. Suicide, suicide attempts, and suicidal thoughts is a growing issue and can have lasting impacts on millions of people and their families. While some of the biggest risk factors of suicide include previous suicide attempts, mood disorders, substance abuse disorders, and access to lethal means,…

The Surgical Diagnostic and Staging Procedure data field is most commonly assigned a code 02 for biopsy that obtains tissue of the primary site, as this is a direct way to identify the histologic type of cancer through a microscopic evaluation. But what about the less common Surgical Diagnostic Staging Procedure codes, such as code 05? The Standards for Oncology Registry Entry (STORE) 2023 describes Surgical…