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A different kind of hospital conference
by Frederick L. Greene, MD, FACS
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Knowledge is learning something every day. Wisdom is letting go of something every day. - Zen proverb | |
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It was September 2019. My colleagues and I had been immersed in articles and presentations regarding the “financial toxicity” that was affecting a large cohort of our cancer patients. As clinicians, we certainly knew that the cost of healthcare was continuing to escalate and was adversely affecting each of our patients as a major stressor in their overall care.
Banding together, the financial counselors, oncology nurse navigators, hospital administrators, social workers, pharmacy staff, advanced practice nurses, surgeons, medical oncologists, radiologists, radiation oncologists, and trainees decided to tackle the problem proactively, or at least retroactively, to understand the toxic issues. Hopefully, this would lead to improved patient care and a cohesive systemic approach to these financial conundrums. Although we had 12 other multidisciplinary conferences either weekly or biweekly, we established yet another tumor board - the Financial Toxicity Tumor Board (FTTB)!
The FTTB was established to address the burgeoning issue of financial toxicity that has been linked with bankruptcy, noncompliance to treatment, increased anxiety, worsened outcomes, and increased mortality. Our intent was to find solutions to ameliorate these
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What's your timeliness benchmark? | |
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Is one of your registry management performance indicators measuring timeliness of abstracting? If so,CRStar’s “Enhanced” timeliness report will now allow users the ability to benchmark timeliness standards in intervals of 1-, 2- and 3-month increments based on any population of cases.
The enhanced report that will be available following the next upgrade will allow users to choose the date used for calculation from either Date Abstracted or CoC Date Case Complete. Additionally, the patient list has been enhanced to include more data variables to assist registry managers and abstractors in identifying gaps in timeliness of abstracting. Those variables are:
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Below is an example of the output. The enhanced timeliness report will be located under Enhanced Reporting, Registry Management Reports and Timeliness on the main CRStar Menu. | |
Watch for additional new and enhanced reporting in the coming months. A member of our support team is always available for assistance. Users may log into the Support Portal at the link below: | |
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Clinical Corner
Frederick L. Greene, MD FACS, CMO
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Currently there is an explosion of data that associates body weight to a variety of cancers. Although clinicians and epidemiologists have used the Body Mass Index (BMI = weight in kilograms/height in meters2) as an indicator of ideal weight and obesity, recent discussions support that BMI is insufficient to fully indicate levels of obesity.
What has been universally agreed upon is that achieving an ideal body weight will help to reduce the incidence of many types of malignancy. Bariatric (weight loss) surgery for obesity may also significantly lower the risk for breast, colon, liver, pancreatic, ovarian and thyroid cancer. These operations include sleeve gastrectomy, gastric bypass and gastric band procedures. There is growing evidence that the significant weight loss associated with bariatric surgery may also have a protective effect against the formation of obesity-related cancers as well.
Recent studies have shown that the cumulative incidence of obesity-related cancer at 10 years was 4% in a bariatric surgery group and 8.9% in the nonsurgical control group. These studies also showed that the bariatric surgery group had lower numbers of new cases for all types of obesity-related cancer, including breast, colon, liver, pancreatic, ovarian and thyroid tumors. Data such as these indicate that obesity status and weight loss procedures are important data points that deserve collection in our cancer registries.
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Listen to the latest episode of Cancer Registry World | |
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The latest episode of the Cancer Registry World podcast is available now! Guest Denise Harrison, BS, CTR, Education Board Director for NCRA, joins Dr. Frederick L. Greene to discuss educational programs for cancer registry professionals and the potential avenues that can take the profession to the next level.
Previous episodes with guests Sharon Gentry, Kay Washington, Lori A. Swain, Loria A. Pollack, Shirley Dalrymple, Robert K. Brookland, Timothy W. Mullett, Catherine Bieker, Jon Patrick, Barbara Dearmon, Lejla Hadzikadic-Gusic, William Laffey, Rohit Nayak, Mellisa Wheeler, Lillie D. Shockney, and Karen Mason, are still available on our website or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, including ApplePodcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio and TuneIn.
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Two Oncology Leaders
One Great Solution
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Are you ready to take your cancer registry to the next level? If so, we would love to connect to discuss an NLP Pathology solution for casefinding that will save you valuable time and resources, so you quickly see a Return on Investment!
A manual process for determining reportability and manually entering cases for pathology records can consume 10-15% of registry resources. With increased regulatory and accreditation requirements and shortages of CTRs, registries simply cannot afford to put a drain on FTE resources, when intelligent casefinding options are available!
Would you like to learn more about how a NLP solution could benefit your registry and save time and resources? Click on the Let’s Talk button to schedule a call with Melanie Rogan, CTR, Director Growth and Strategic Services.
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Do you love CRStar?
So do we and we are offering our loyal customers the chance to earn a $200 gift card when a Cancer Program that you refer becomes an ERS customer!
Please click "Refer CRStar" below if you know of any Cancer Programs that could benefit from CRStar and the advantages that CRStar users enjoy and rely on.
Let's grow our CRStar community together!
Terms and conditions can be found on the CRStar Referral Form.
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