One presentation that impressed me was the Workplace Exchange: Improving Data Completeness, Quality and Timeliness presented by Nancy Lebrun, CTR.
Some central registries find it difficult to build productive professional relationships with facility based cancer registries. This difficulty can arise when the two registries do not understand each other’s duties and registry activities resulting in low or late case submissions and incomplete case submissions. The Rhode Island Central Registry developed a solution to improve the relationships and expand and enhance data collection.
Nancy Lebrun from the Rhode Island Central Registry visited facilities and worked with registry staff to obtain an understanding of what occurs in a facility registry, how it works, where does the information come from and who authorizes work performed in the registry. During her time working with facilities she learned about the Commission on Cancer responsibilities such as, RQRS, CP3R, SAR, PAR, tumor board/cancer conference and cancer committee. She also learned how a facility gathers the information to abstract and the policy to obtain information from other facilities and that this process can be time consuming and difficult.
The Rhode Island Central Registry goal was to develop relationships with the registries so the state has a better understanding of the facilities duties and needs and the facilities will have a better understanding of what the state needs and their responsibilities. The Rhode Island Central Registry is working to close the gap in communication and to develop lasting relationships with the facilities in Rhode Island. By developing these relationships, the New Hampshire hopes to obtain more current and improved quality data. Other Central Registries that find it difficult to obtain timely and quality data may want to follow the lead of the Rhode Island Central Registry.
This Recap was provided by Roberta Adams, CTR- Quality Control Manager for the Registry Partners- Oncology Services Division