We Have the Questions, YOUR Cancer Registry Has the Answers!
With the depth and the quality of the cancer registry data collection process within cancer programs, it is hard not to ask questions related to your patient population and why your program is growing or in some cases not growing? Listed below is a very small example in a world full of thousands and thousands of oncology related questions:
Where do our oncology patients come from?
Are they referred?
Where they diagnosed elsewhere?
What is the average age of our oncology patients?
What type of insurance coverage do our oncology patients have?
What are our outcomes/survival statistics for our oncology population?
What cities are included in our primary catchment area for oncology?
Why do we diagnose so many cancers but only treat half of them for first course therapy?
Who refers patients to our facility for surgical management?
Who refers patients to our facility for systemic therapy?
Who refers patients to our facility for radiation therapy?
Do our oncology patients go elsewhere to be offered the option of a clinical trial?
Do we refer our oncology patients for a second opinion and never see them again?
Do we see enough oncology patients to warrant a surgical oncologist?
Do we see enough oncology patients to warrant a gynecological oncologist?
Do we diagnose and treat enough patients for high-end radiotherapy investments?
Do we compare our community needs assessment with our cancer registry data on at least an annual basis?