Reporting Anatomic pathology to registries or public health repositories

1. Proposed Work Item: Workflow for Reporting Anatomic pathology to Cancer Registry

• Editors: Wendy Scharber?, Christel Daniel?

2. The Problem

Cancer Registries are data systems that collect data on the occurrence of cancer; the type, extent, and location of the cancer; and the type of initial treatment. In each registry, medical facilities (including hospitals, physicians' offices, therapeutic radiation facilities, freestanding surgical centers, and anatomic pathology laboratories) report these data to the state central cancer registry. The cancer information gathered is critical for Public Health to have the ability to report Cancer Statistics. Cancer registry data is used to provide information on cancer trends, survival, treatment standards, access to healthcare and serves as a resource for research.

Historically, Cancer Registries have received paper reports from anatomic pathology laboratories (if received at all) and the registries are required to send Cancer Registrars into laboratories to manually identify reportable cases and abstract pertinent information into an electronic form. This type of case ascertainment and data collection for the cancer registry is very resource intensive, time consuming, and prone to error in transcription and in missed cases. The process could benefit greatly from the implementation of standards reporting pathology information directly to the central cancer registry.

4. Standards & Systems

The North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) has developed a standard format for reporting electronic anatomic pathology data using HL7 version 2.3.1.