December 2021
In this newsletter, you will find:
  • Happy Holidays from ERS!
  • ERS Welcomes Amy Arnold as Manager, Strategic Services
  • ERS Hosts Two Webinars in December
  • About You! - Last Chance to Cast Your Vote!
  • Clinical Corner by Frederick L. Greene, MD, FACS, CMO
  • ERS Debuts New Series in 2022: Cancer Center Showcase
  • Tip of the Month: Monitoring Compliance with CoC Standard 9.1 - Clinical Research Accrual
  • Refer CRStar - Earn $200
Happy Holidays from ERS!
The staff of ERS would like to wish all of our customers a happy and safe holiday season!

We appreciate and value your engagements and partnerships and look forward to continuing those partnerships in 2022!
ERS Welcomes Amy Arnold
as Manager, Strategic Services
ERS would like to welcome Amy Arnold, CTR, who joined the ERS team December 1, 2021, as Manager, Strategic Services. Amy will lead all educational activities for the company. Additionally, she will participate and support our product management roadmap, as well as assist in project management activities related to certain implementations and special projects.

Amy comes to ERS with more than eight years of experience within the Cancer Registry and more than 13 years of experience in the healthcare industry. She began her healthcare career working in the Emergency Department as a secretary. From this position, Amy moved to leading her emergency department’s EMR implementation team. This role afforded her a glimpse into the software side of the hospital and Amy was hooked. She proceeded to obtain her bachelor’s degree in Health Informatics while working various positions at the hospital.

While she was working toward her bachelor’s degree, Amy had the opportunity to work with the hospital’s cancer committee. It was during this time that Amy learned the CoC standards and decided to become a CTR. In Amy’s words, “Working with the hospital’s cancer committee helped me see how important data abstraction is for the progress of cancer care.” Amy became dedicated to working with cancer committees across the country to utilize the CoC standards to better their patient care.

Over the past 5 years Amy has volunteered with NCRA as a mentor and on the Social Media Committee and secretary for her state association, ANCCR. Most recently Amy was elected president for her state association.

Amy has three children - two teenage sons and a six-year-old daughter. She is an avid crocheter and can often be found making blankets for friends and family. When Amy isn’t crocheting, she is volunteering at her church or leading her Life Group. Amy, like many people, had been touched personally by cancer in her family and found a calling that would help impact change for cancer patients.

Welcome Amy!
ERS Hosts Two Webinars in December
ERS will host two webinars this month!

As we mentioned in last month's newsletter, the next installment in our Executive Cancer Center Leader Webinar Series will be “The Cancer Registry and Tumor Board: A Dynamic Duo.” This webinar will be co-presented by Dr. Frederick Greene, Chief Medical Officer, who has been a CoC surveyor for more than 30 years, Dauphne McGavic, RN, MSN, CTR, Director of Oncology Accreditation & Support Services for Ascension Saint Thomas in Nashville, TN, and Melanie Rogan, CTR, Director of Registry Services for ERS.

This one-hour webinar will be presented at noon ET on December 14,2021 and will focus on the purpose of tumor boards, the role the CoC has played in the development of tumor boards, an overview of tumor board accreditation standards and the roles and responsibilities the cancer registry plays. New innovations will be discussed, as well as the future of tumor boards.

Please invite your Oncology and Cancer Center Leaders to attend!
The second webinar in our Cancer Registry Webinar Series is titled, “Edit Enlightenment- Conquering Genedits and Metafiles.” This educational webinar will be presented by Jonathan Rakestraw, BS, CTR, Client Advocate Specialist at noon ET on Tuesday, Dec. 28,2021 and Thursday, Dec. 30,2021.

This one hour webinar will review the edit metafile release process and address the differences between edit metafiles, edit sets, user dictionaries and data dictionaries. We will review the various tools provided by NAACCR and in GenEdits Plus to assist registrars with explanations and resolutions of edits. Using real world examples of edits registrars encounter in everyday abstractions, we will provide examples of how to troubleshoot and resolve edits.

This webinar has been approved for 1 CE hour from NCRA. Invitations will be emailed on December 14, 2021. We hope to see all of you there!
About You! - Last Chance to Cast Your Vote!
The 2021 About You Series is drawing to a close. You still have time to influence who receives the prize for the most likes on Facebook! The individual with the most likes will be announced in our January 2022 newsletter.

Over the course of 2021, we have highlighted several well-deserving CTRs in our About You Series. Through their unwavering dedication and commitment to the registry profession, the care of countless cancer patients have improved dramatically because of their service.

Thanks to all of you who took the time to read their stories and support the CTR community. Click on the names of our featured CTRs to read their stories again and if you haven't voted yet, please do!
Oklahoma University
Medical Center
OU Medicine, Inc.
PhD, MSN, MEd, CTR
Santa Barbara City College
Mercyhealth
Janesville, WI & Rockford, IL
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center
University of Florida Shands Hospital
Gainesville
himagine solutions
ERS thanks all of our featured CTRs as well as everyone involved in the cancer registry community. You make the world a better place!
Clinical Corner
Frederick L. Greene, MD, FACS, CMO
On December 23, 1971, 50 years ago this month, President Richard Nixon signed into law the National Cancer Act, heralding our National Cancer Program and the “War on Cancer.” As a result of this legislation, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) was strengthened, NCI-designated cancer centers were created, the cancer clinical trials network was expanded and opportunities for cancer research were intensified. In the registry world, the NCI SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results) Program was launched.

In 1970, there were 625,000 new cases of cancer in the United States and three million survivors. The five-year survival rate was 49%. In 2021, we have seen the largest single decline in annual cancer mortality rates in the United States! In 2030, 22.1 million cancer survivors are predicted and a five-year survival rate greater than 70% is anticipated! We have come a long way in the last 50 years.
 
You, who are the archivists of cancer data at your institutions, should be immensely proud since you have added significantly to these successes. The impact of our cancer registries and registrars, although frequently not highlighted, has been one of the main reasons for these accomplishments over these 50 years. The melding of modern technology to create and enhance our cancer registries and the unlimited human factors brought to the registry profession will continue to add to the incredible legacy of the National Cancer Act begun 50 years ago.
ERS Debuts New Series in 2022
Beginning in January 2022, each month we will showcase the success story of one of our partner cancer centers. Each article will feature highlights of registry operations, cancer center initiatives and how ERS and CRStar are utilized to meet and achieve their registry and cancer center goals and business objectives.
 
Our first featured partner in this series will be the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, MI, who was the first CoC accredited program in the country and just celebrated their 90th year with the CoC. Be sure to check out our January newsletter for their journey.
 
If you are interested in featuring your health system in a future edition of the ERS newsletter, please contact Melanie Rogan, Director of Registry Services.
Tip of the Month
Monitoring Compliance with CoC Standard 9.1
Clinical Research Accrual
Is your registry assisting in supporting the Clinical Research Accrual Standard? The Cancer Program Management Accreditation Tracker in CRStar helps users support this standard with the following data fields to track:

  • Clinical Trial Consideration, Eligibility and Participation
  • Accrual and Start Dates
  • Study Type
  • Trial Name
  • Tracking Physician
  • Following Status
  • Reason if Withdrawn from Trial
These fields are multi-valued to be able to track multiple Clinical Trial Enrollment. These data can be used together in reports or combined with other data fields from the abstract for meaningful and insightful data analysis. Shown are a few examples of reports generated in CRStar utilizing this data.
Refer CRStar - Earn $200
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.
View a CRStar video
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