Many registries have to report to at least 3 authorities, usually: State Registry, Commission on Cancer and CDC while others may also report to SEER.
While there is mostly common content, the differences can be both in the data required and the rules defining that data. To compound the problem, these complexities can often be dwarfed by two other content filters: a. separating the reportable cancer documents from the other two classes of reports, namely the non-reportable cancer reports and the non-cancer reports, and, b. finding the date of initial diagnosis in a complex patient record.
Dealing with the first of these problems, the separation of document types, is particularly acute for regional and central registries.
The Greater California CR has determined that about 60% of the documents they receive are irrelevant to their needs. In a volume of greater than 600,000 reports per annum that amounts to over 360,000 irrelevant documents, a huge overburden of work before the CTRs can get down to doing the task they have been trained (and paid) for.
As part of our research into the size of this problem, we’d like to understand the extent of the overburden in your registry, so here’s a very short questionnaire:
- Is your institution a Hospital/Regional CR/ Central CR?
- How many reports per annum do you receive?
- What proportion of those reports are irrelevant to the registry work?
You can answer the questionnaire here. Your help will be gratefully accepted.
Cross-posted to LinkedIn.