MCR MINI-UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2013
Fellow registrars,
Nancy Cole is cancer-free following chemo for her lymphoma - that is our best news of the month!
At the MoSTRA annual meeting in Springfield October 9 through 11, Nancy will share insights, from the other side of the abstract, on her experiences with having a second primary cancer. I hope we will see you there. Four MCR staff will present topics and you can get ICD-10-CM training and more. Check out the details and forms on the MoSTRA website: http://mostra-ctr.org/annualmeeting.asp Brochures were recently mailed.
Deadlines
Facilities that are on schedule should be abstracting 2013 cases. Large hospitals (>500 cases/yr) are to report February cases by September 15 and smaller facilities (<300 cases /yr) report the 1st Quarter of 2013 by Oct. 15. If you have not started 2013 cases, please make every effort to bring your registry into compliance as soon as is possible.
MCR NEWS
EDUCATION
NAACCR Webinars – Get 3 CEs By Viewing Recorded Webinars. Request Access Now! Check out our Education and Training page to find out how you can receive access to the recorded NAACCR Webinars.
September 5, 2013 – Coding Pitfalls
Live Meeting -
September 11, 2013 10 am – Taking the Pain out of Palliative Care Coding presented by Nancy Rold
Please note that the email reminders will be coming from Angela Martin but to register for any of our educational opportunities, contact Shari Ackerman at or 1-866-240-8809. Please be sure to clarify which event you will be attending when you register.
Web Plus Conversion
As we cited in the blast email of 8/14/13, Web Plus has been converted to v13 and is available to upload v13 files and to update death clearance cases. If you have not converted your abstracting software to v13, please begin that process now.
IMPAC/METRIQ software users who validated some of their cases under an old v13 metafile may find that Web Plus rejects your first v13 file upload because of errors to cases that were not noted by the previous metafile. If so, be sure you have the correct metafile in place, revalidate the cases with noted errors, and then resubmit the ENTIRE file to MCR. The correct metafile, MO v13A dated 7-10-13, is available from your vendor or from the MCR website
Death Clearance
Death clearance is now underway and if your facility has cases to review you should have received them by now. Follow-back forms should be completed and returned by August 30th. Some cases are being released without information in the comments and we can’t process the cases until that is provided. Please keep in mind that for all cases, whether reportable for your facility or not, notes with brief, pertinent details should be included so we know how to proceed with clearing the case on our end.
Record in the Comments section if:
· It is a missed case;
· the case was previously diagnosed and is not reportable for your hospital but there is enough information to provide us with a diagnosis date or an estimated diagnosis date - record any tumor/treatment info also;
· the dx date is not mentioned but it appears patient was recently diagnosed and/or is currently receiving treatment elsewhere.
Always remember to save the comments and selectRelease to send the information to MCR.
Cases that are Rejected must also include brief, pertinent notes as to why. They include:
· those that were never a patient at your facility;
· those with absolutely no mention of the death clearance diagnosis in the record;
· those previously diagnosed and mentioned in the record but a dx date or estimated dx date cannot be determined (some tumor/treatment, physician or other hospital info may be available);
· those that were previously reported to MCR.
If rejected, record in the Reject Follow-back Request text box why,and give any details regarding tumor/treatment and/or names of other facilities/physicians where patient may have been seen.
If it appears the case was previously reported to MCR,check the date completed, date exported and date transmitted fieldsin your hospital abstract - sometimes cases were thought to have been submitted but they did not actually get transmitted. If there is a transmit date, provide the accession number and date transmitted. Always remember to select Submit to release rejected cases to MCR.
Being Pro-active
When you hear of an EMR software change or review of registration practices and face sheet content at your facility please speak up about the requirement to collect demographics needed for registry reporting. If you are not pro-active, items like Place of Birth may be deleted thinking no one needs that info. Several registrars have experienced these fields disappearing from the medical record and it can be an uphill battle to try to get them restored.
STANDARD SETTER NEWS
Big News on Staging!
Jeannette shared surprising information presented in August at the NPCR Program Directors meeting in Atlanta. Last week all of the standard-setters have made a public announcement. It appears that CDC, CoC and AJCC have agreed that collection of Collaborative Stage will end with cancers diagnosed in 2015! By 2016, central registries and CoC will instead collect directly coded AJCC stage and SEER Summary Stage along with some necessary biomarkers and prognostic factors. Details will be forthcoming and educational materials provided over the next 2 years. Standard setters will ask for input from registrars as details are worked out. Although it was an innovative idea, CS has apparently proved to be too complex and expensive to manage and, as we know, is a considerable burden on registrars.
CS v2.05
In spite of the fact that CS will be phased out by 2016, there will be a new version (CSv2.05) released for cases diagnosed starting 1/1/2014. Per a webinar that I attended this week on the beta release for vendors and central registries, the CS team feels justified to release a new version because it includes 104 improvements regarding mapping and clarifications of notes that will improve data quality. There will be no conversion of abstracted data fields and a minimal number of cases needing manual review. The CS v2.05 Instructions will become only web-based and will include helpful links from the schema data items to other pertinent sections of the manuals (tables, etc.). There will be a checklist for hospital registrars to help you through the steps required to convert from v2.04 to v2.05. Vendors will able to hide discontinued items from your abstracting displays. The CS website will have a different look too, with less need to scroll down through long pages. The SSF required status will be in a searchable database rather than in spreadsheets and will provide the ability to filter and run reports based on different variables (for instance by standard setter).
SEER Rx
The SEER*RX Interactive Drug Database was updated on August 6, 2013. This version includes nine (9) new drugs recently approved by the FDA and 21 new regimens. Modifications were made to 20 drugs currently found in the database. The modifications include spelling and grammar corrections and updated remarks. No drugs have changed categories as a result of this update. A summary of changes is available and the link can be found on the SEER*RX web page. Website: http://seer.cancer.gov/tools/seerrx/
RESOURCES
Increased risk of cancer in families of children with cancer
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-08-family-members-children-cancer.html
Time interval from surgery to start of chemo has prognostic implications for ovarian cancer (possible idea for quality study?)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0090825813010068
ER/PR negative status in endometrial curettage predicts LN mets and poorer outcome
http://www.ejcancer.com/article/S0959-8049(13)00491-7/abstract
Rise in high-end treatment for low-risk prostate cancer
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/25/us-prostate-cancer-idUSBRE95O1CH20130625
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1700496
Esophageal cancer deaths down for blacks
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6227a8.htm?s_cid=mm6227a8_e
Cowboys get cancer too – smokeless tobacco prevention/education article and video
http://missoulian.com/news/local/cowboys-get-cancer-too-says-speaker-at-smokeless-tobacco-summit/article_5445e1e2-ff04-11e2-b71d-0019bb2963f4.html?comment_form=true
HPV possibly involved in SCCA of Esophagus
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/263919.php
I hope you enjoy a safe Labor Day Weekend!
Nancy H. Rold, CTR
QA Unit Supervisor
Missouri Cancer Registry and Research Center