November 2022 Newsletter

Did you register for next week's webinar?

Our upcoming, one hour webinar, Productivity: Unraveling the Mystery, is scheduled for 12 pm EST on Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022 and has been approved for 1 CEU by NCRA. An encore presentation will be at 12 pm EST on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022.

Presented by Amy Arnold, BA, CTR, Manager, Strategic Services at ERS, this latest educational offering will focus on how to establish registry benchmarks for productivity, how to track productivity, and explore best practices for assisting staff struggling to meet productivity.

Invitations were emailed to CRStar users last week. If you did not receive your invitation, please submit a support ticket and one of our Client Advocates will gladly send you one. 

Cancer immunotherapies use the body’s own immune system to fight off cancer. Despite some remarkable success stories, many patients only see a temporary improvement before the immunotherapy stops being effective and the tumors regrow. It is unclear why this  occurs, but it may have to do with how the immune system attacks cancer cells.

Immunotherapies aim to activate a special group of cells known as killer T-cells, which are responsible for the immune response to tumors. These cells can identify cancer cells and inject toxic granules through their membranes, killing them. However, killer T-cells are not always effective because cancer cells are naturally good at avoiding detection, and during treatment, their genes can mutate, giving them new ways to evade the immune system.

It has been shown in mouse models that tumors stop responding to immunotherapy after initial treatment. Examining cells from these tumors revealed that when the immune system attacks, cancer cells reorganize by getting inside one another. This allows some cancer cells to hide under many layers of cell membrane. As a result, killer T-cells can identify and inject the outer cell with toxic granules, but cannot reach the cells inside.

This new explanation for how cancer cells escape the immune system could guide future research and lead to new cancer treatments or approaches to boost existing treatments. It is even more important that our cancer registries capture all important information when patients are treated with immunotherapy regimens. Data from our registries will drive important clinical research in this field.

We love our community of members and supporters, and want to keep you up to date on all the great things happening at ERS, Inc. We’re excited to announce that in addition to our newly launched website, we are also launching two new social media profiles on Instagram and Twitter! We plan on sharing information and updates regularly, including newsletters, Dr. Rick Greene's Cancer Registry World podcast, industry news and events, and more!

Please take a moment and visit our pages. Once there, click “Like” or “Follow”. We look forward to bringing you tons of great information and connecting with you! We encourage you to comment and share on our posts too!

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And if you aren’t already following us on Facebook and LinkedIn, be sure to connect with there too!

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The integration of data to and from the cancer registry can add a tremendous amount of value to any cancer program, therefore, impacting the patient journey. A few of the value adds include:

• Promotes concurrency of casefinding and abstracting
• Increases follow-up rates
• Increases registry productivity and efficiency
• Adjusts resources for other cancer registry operations
• Promotes concurrent reporting, quality and research initiaves
• Supports the needs of the entire oncology service line

Registries nationwide are using one or more data sources for casefinding, abstracting and

follow-up, as well as sharing data with other sources. Automating data eliminates the need for manual processes and the data can be imported or exported in real-time or at pre-scheduled Intervals. The table below lists both inbound and outbound sources for cancer registry data integration.

If your registry would like to maximize the value of the registry data and learn more about

integrating with other oncology partners, click on the Let’s Talk button to schedule a one-on-one discussion with Melanie Rogan, Director, Growth and Strategic Services.

The latest episode of Dr. Rick Greene's Cancer Registry World podcast featuring guest Jon Patrick, PhD, CEO, Innovative Clinical Information Management Systems is available now! Professor Patrick, from Sydney, Australia, is the past chair of Language Technology at the University of Sydney.

In 2012 he co-founded Health Language Analytics (HLA) and currently serves as CEO of Innovative Clinical Information Management Systems. Professor Patrick has a diverse background in the computer science disciplines of computational linguistics, information systems, machine learning and software engineering.

Previous episodes with guests 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.

The cancer registry can play a pivotal role in the patient navigation and survivorship process. Oncology patient navigators assist patients by coordinating patient services, identifying disparities and barriers to care, identifying gaps in service relating to the diagnosis and treatment of the patient and assess and monitor patient outcomes. Patients that are enrolled in a navigation process are proven to have a much easier time navigating through the comprehensive and sometimes confusing paths they face to handle their disease process.

Cancer registries and navigation departments collect much of the same information. By providing registry data to the navigators, they can identify patients for enrollment faster and help monitor gaps in care, outcomes data and assist with survivorship processes. Below are some of the data that can be provided by the registry:

• Concurrent lists of newly diagnosed patients for possible enrollment
• Demographic information to identify disparities and barriers to care
• Accurate diagnostic and treatment data
• Timely outcomes data including recurrence and death information

CRStar users can especially be helpful to the navigators in maintaining accreditation standards by:

• Providing a 90% completed Survivorship Care Plan
• Providing access to the Accreditation Tracker and reporting module

In addition to this helpful hint, ERS, Inc. is now partnered with NurseNav to provide comprehensive integration between these two powerful systems to add even more value to the oncology service line.

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