In this newsletter, you will find: |
- NAACCR V22 and NCDB Call for Data 2022 Updates
- About You! Putting the Spotlight on CTRs: Janet Vogel, CTR
- Clinical Corner by Frederick L. Greene, MD, FACS, CMO
- Catch Up with Dr. Greene at Several Upcoming Meetings!
- Tip of the Month: Managing Report Populations
- October Employee Spotlight - Dr. Frederick Greene
- Refer CRStar - Earn $200
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NAACCR V22 and NCDB Call for Data 2022 Updates |
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2022 will be here before we know it! In the cancer registry world, we know that a new year brings new changes and 2022 is no different. ERS has already been diligently working to make the transition to NAACCR V22 as seamless as we did with the V21 upgrade.
NAACCR has provided important resource documentation as the registry community plans to transition from V21 to V22. It is highly recommended that registrars familiarize themselves with these resources, guidelines and change documents. Below is a link to access this important information.
In addition to these valuable resources, NAACCR has posted V22 education and training information.
In other industry news, NCDB has posted submission specifications for the 2022 Call for Data. The submission window will be open from 3/1/2022-3/31/2022 and will include:
- All analytic cases diagnosed on or after 2006
- All cases meeting above specifications diagnosed from 2020 plus
- All cases meeting the above specifications diagnosed between 2006-2019 that were modified since the 2021 call for data
For detailed information, please follow the link below.
Stay tuned for important announcements and other information as we work to deploy these upgrades.
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About You! Putting the Spotlight on CTRs
Janet Vogel, CTR
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The next well-deserving CTR highlighted by our About You! Series is Janet Vogel, CTR. She is currently the Compliance & Quality Auditor and Cancer Registry Educator for himagine solutions. Her interview is posted on Facebook.
Reminder: The featured individual with the greatest number of “likes” on Facebook will receive a prize at the end of the year! If you're not already following us on Facebook, please make sure to click "Like" our page while you're there!
Please take this opportunity to engage and highlight a community that often doesn’t get recognized – and have some fun while doing it.
If you know of a CTR who deserves recognition or if you are a Cancer Center leader who would like to give a shout out to an outstanding CTR, please reach out and let us know. Upon getting permission with the CTR’s leadership, Sally Kruse, CTR, a legend in her own right, will follow up with a wide-ranging interview and a summary article representing her discussion.
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Clinical Corner
Frederick L. Greene, MD, FACS, CMO
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In 1775, Percivall Pott, a surgeon working in London, reported on an unusual cancer involving the skin of the scrotum in chimney sweeps. This was perhaps the first account of a true occupation-related cancer. In 2021, the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a number of articles have appeared supporting the occurrence of several types of cancers in firefighters who survived the World Trade Center attacks.
In the intervening 246 years, there have been many reports attesting to the significant associations of cancer with occupations. Employees in naval shipyards exposed to asbestos have had a significant increase in mesothelioma, painters of radium dials in watches have suffered from head and neck cancer, long-haul airline pilots have had an increase in squamous cell cancer of the face, aniline dye workers have been afflicted with bladder cancer, and the list goes on.
My message today is that collection of data relating to a patient’s occupation is a critical, but frequently absent data point in cancer abstracts. Although there may be areas in the abstract to capture this information, sadly the occupational history is routinely missing from the managing physicians’ clinical notes.
There is no requirement in the STORE manual and in the NCDB for collection of a patient’s occupation. Obviously, including this requirement as a data point would increase collection and add to a valuable database which could uncover unknown occupational cases of cancer. There is a “free text” area created by NAACCR to use for reporting occupational data to central and state registries, but again, the ability to do so depends heavily on the information that is collected in the clinical arena.
In order for our cancer registries to be useful in uncovering occupational exposure as a cause of cancer, we first need to assure that the occupational data is collected. I am delighted that our CRStar software includes areas for listing “occupation” and “industry” and provides an area for free text. I would urge all registrars to collect these data points when possible. Who knows - the occupational cancer that is uncovered by your data entry may be as defining as the report by Percivall Pott!
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Catch up with Dr. Greene at Several Upcoming Meetings! |
ERS is pleased to announce that our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Frederick L. Greene, will be conducting presentations at several upcoming meetings.
He will give the Keynote Presentation at the CRANE (Cancer Registrars Association of New England) Annual Meeting on October 19. Additionally, he will be presenting “CoC Standards and the Registry” at the following registry meetings:
- MICRA (Michigan Cancer Registrars Association) Annual Meeting (Oct. 21 & Oct. 22)
- PACR (Pennsylvania Association of Cancer Registrars) Annual Meeting (Nov. 1 thru Dec. 31)
- SCCRA (South Carolina Cancer Registrars Association) Annual Meeting (Nov. 17 thru Nov. 19)
“CoC Standards and the Registry” reviews the CoC Standard 5 and identifies opportunities for data input into the cancer registry, reviews the importance of synoptic reporting for pathology and surgical reports and identifies opportunities for interoperability between the cancer registry and other data repositories in the cancer system.
Dr. Greene will also present “CoC Standards and Patient and Nurse Navigation: at the AONN+ (Association of Patient and Nurse Navigators) that runs from Nov. 17 thru Nov. 21.
If you are attending any of these meetings, please be sure to check your agenda to find Dr. Greene’s speaking time.
We hope to see you there!
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Tip of the Month
Managing Report Populations
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Do you ever find that you are spending lots of time searching through your endless report population labels to find the exact one you are looking for? And each time you search, do you tell yourself, “When I get time, I am going to clean these up”?
One of our registry best practice tips is to routinely do a population cleanup and delete the populations no longer needed. Do you really need that population label from Dr. Smith’s 2010 study, especially considering Dr. Smith retired in 2011? Probably not! When the registry has hundreds of labels it can be a tedious task to delete them one by one. We suggest using the Clear Selected Population feature located in the reporting module to delete multiple labels at once. Once the user selects all the labels to delete, they can be reviewed one more time to ensure they should be deleted.
Additionally, we suggest a quarterly cleanup. When in a large facility and especially a multi-facility database, these labels can become overwhelming in no time at all! Before deleting, another best practice tip is to run a quarterly request log report since the last cleanup. The Request Log can be selected by a date range, exported to Excel and saved to a folder. This way you still have a reference to previous populations. The Request Log report is also located in the report module under Cancer Program Management Reports.
Another tip to make population searches easier is to sort the column headers by facility code, date selected, alphabetic by name or the requestor. There is also a search feature, where you can type in the entire name or partial names to search for matching terms.
Being efficient with simple registry operations can save valuable time and frustration.
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October Employee Spotlight - Dr. Frederick Greene |
This month’s spotlight shines on Dr. Frederick (Rick) Greene, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) at ERS. Frederick L. Greene, MD, FACS, received his medical school training at the University of Virginia and completed a residency in surgery at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Greene was also an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Fellow at Yale.
Following residency, Dr. Greene served on active duty with the US Navy as surgeon aboard the USS Nimitz and as an Attending Surgeon at Portsmouth Naval Hospital. Dr. Greene was on the surgical faculty of the University of South Carolina from 1980 to 1997 and served as Chief of Surgery at the Dorn VA Medical Center from 1980-87. He served as Chairman of the Department of General Surgery and Surgical Residency Program Director at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, NC from 1997 to 2012.
In addition to his position with ERS, Dr. Greene currently serves as Medical Director of Cancer Data Services at the Levine Cancer Institute in Charlotte, NC. He has participated as an active clinician in surgical oncology and is a member of a number of editorial boards. Dr. Greene has served on the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons and as the Chairman of the Commission. He has represented the American College of Surgeons on the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) and served as Chair of the AJCC from 2000-2004. Dr. Greene has served as Vice-Chair of the TNM Staging Core Group of the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Dr. Greene has authored approximately 200 papers, 60 book chapters and two textbooks. He is also the editor of the 6th, 7th and 8th editions of the AJCC Cancer Staging Manual. Since 2009, Dr. Greene has been the host of the medical podcasts, The Recovery Room, and Speaking of SurgOnc, both produced and recorded at the NPR studios in Charlotte.
When asked about his position with ERS, as CMO, Dr. Greene says, “I love working with the ERS team and the opportunity to enhance the role of cancer registrars and introducing to the importance of registrars and the power of cancer registries.” He writes a monthly series in the ERS newsletter, called "The Clinical Corner" and will chair the newly created ERS Advisory Board.
Dr. Greene and his wife Donna enjoy traveling, playing golf and going to University of Virginia sporting events. He also enjoys spending time with family, especially his two children and three grandchildren!
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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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ERS, Inc. | 1.800.824.9020 | www.mycrstar.com |
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