ACE Objectives
• Promote excellence and enhance skills in leadership in business and clinical management aspects of cancer care
• Provide a forum for dialogue on cancer program development challenges and opportunities
• Disseminate emerging, innovative oncology management best practices among the national cancer care community
• Optimize the value of networking and support
I recently had the pleasure of exhibiting, participating and presenting at the 22nd annual meeting of the Association of Cancer Executives (ACE) in Rancho Mirage, CA. This is an organization of cancer executives and leaders throughout the United States with a vested interest in sharing the goals of many of us to improve the quality of patient care across the country.
My presentation was to help enlighten this group of over 100 attendees with an insight in the multiple uses of cancer data through the cancer registry data base in combination with the resources provided by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC) National Cancer Data Base (NCDB).
The value and the quality of the data entered into the cancer registry and subsequently reported to other state and national agencies is one of the many reasons we continue to make huge strides in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer that will hopefully someday lead to eliminating cancer as a cause of death to so many people, young and old.
The presentation focused on the specific use of Cancer Program Practice Profile Reports (CP3R) that includes National Quality Forum (NQF) endorsed measures for accountability in breast and colon cancers and also quality improvement measures for gastric, lung, ovarian and endometrium, and lastly surveillance measures for breast, and other previously mentioned cancer sites.
Other data reports demonstrated included Cancer Quality Improvement Program (CQIP) that assists CoC-accredited programs with churning their own data into a 100+ power point presentation on areas of cancer sites, in and out migration, insurance status, how far do patients travel/catchment area, mortality for high risk surgeries and survival data.
Hospital Comparison Benchmark Reports (HCBR) were shown so that CoC-accredited facilities can compare their data to that of other programs of similar cancer program category or American Cancer Society region. This data gives programs the ability to perform a more apples to apples comparison report.
Survival Data was also presented as an example for a program to historically look at long-term 5-year survival for over 60 cancer sites. The audience was reminded that the CoC restricts programs from utilizing the results of the survival data as a marketing tool for their accredited cancer program.
The final portion of the presentation was on the Rapid Quality Reporting System (RQRS) that has been an opportunity for program to achieve commendation for their early enrollment but is changing over as of January 1, 2017 that all accredited cancer program must enroll and participated in RQRS on or before that date. RQRS offers cancer programs the opportunity to collect and review “real-time” data in order to ensure patients are receiving various cancer treatments and also the timing of the treatment is being tracked and measured with national guidelines for accountable cancer care as an alert system that generates monthly reports on where a patient is at in their treatment plan and treatment initiated process.
In summary, all of the data collection results provides cancer programs with an opportunity to not have to reinvent the data wheel, but simply remember to grease the wheel with good quality data, turn the wheel as frequently as possible and generate a roadmap to success using their own data in a timely manner.
We look forward to participating in the 23rd Annual ACE meeting in Austin, Texas January 18-21, 2017.
For questions related to cancer data reporting and national cancer data base tools, please contact Registry Partners or submit a question related to this article on our website.