December 2005

NAACCR CTR Exam Readiness Institute

February 9th and 10th, 2006
Double Tree Hotel
Little Rock, AR
Contact: Shannon Vann, CTR
Phone: (315) 682-6543

The purpose of the NAACCR CTR Exam Readiness Institute is to prepare eligible candidates to take the CTR exam. Topics covered include: cancer registry organization and operation; anatomy, physiology, and histology; abstracting and coding; ICD-O-3; Collaborative Staging and AJCC Cancer Staging, 6th Edition; statistics and epidemiology; and computer principles. The registration form, agenda, and goals are on the NAACCR website, www.naaccr.org. On the home page scroll down to Training and link to NAACCR CTR Exam Readiness Institute. Registration deadline is January 11, 2006.

Drugs Changed Categories When SEER*RX Came Out

The following drugs in the 5/17/02 Book 8 update changed from immunotherapy to cytostatic chemotherapy in SEER*RX:

Alemtuzumab/Campath
Bexarotene/Targretin
Bevacizumab/Avastin
Bortezomib/Velcade
Pegaspargase/Oncaspar
Rituximab/Rituxan
Trastuzumab/Herceptin
Asparaginase

The following drugs may have been coded as monoclonal antibodies but are radioisotopes in SEER*Rx:

Epratuzumab/LymphoCide
Ibrituzumab
Tiuxetan/Zevalin
Tositumonmab/Bexxar

Any other monoclonal antibodies either remained as monoclonal antibodies or it was a local decision to code them as immunotherapy. There were no drugs that changed from chemotherapy to immunotherapy.

Reference: SEER*RX is effective for cases diagnosed 1/1/2005 and forward. It replaces all previous references. It is neither required nor recommended that cases treated prior to 2005 be recoded. Please refer to http://seer.cancer.gov/tools/seerrx/ for additional information.

Nassau University Medical Center's Call for Data Experience

The reference date for Nassau University Medical Center's (NUMC) cancer registry is 1989, but they have a cancer registry history that dates back much farther than that. "I still have hand-written ledgers of cancer records dating back to the 1950's stored in the closet here", says Peggy McNamee, CTR. NUMC was also one of the first hospitals in New York state to have a cancer program accredited by the Commission on Cancer.  Clearly, NUMC, has a long history with cancer programs and cancer data.

For many years NUMC was happy with their cancer registry software and continued to use that software for their registry even after the software was purchased by another company. However, the new company developed a new cancer registry software and eventually dropped support of the old software. In 2003, the NUMC was required to convert to the new software, and that is when they began to experience problems with their data.

"The conversion corrupted our data. We made many requests to the vendor to fix the data they corrupted but they were not responsive". After having their requests ignored for a year, the staff at NUMC made the decision to start looking into other software vendors and products which lead them to discover CNExT.

One immediate difference Peggy noted in converting to CNExT is that abstracting is much more streamlined and cases can be completed much more quickly. And the data is clean when a case is completed, thanks to the built-in edits.

Shortly after converting to CNExT in 2004, Peggy needed to prepare her cases and submit them for the NCDB Call for Data. This is where Peggy found CNExT to be better than her old software, hands down.

"I used to send my file into our old vendor to have the edits run. I'd then get a report back from them, make corrections and send the file again. I would make corrections to cases only to find out the corrections caused other errors." The other software vendor also had the criteria for case selection for the Call for Data wrong and when Peggy applied the fix that was provided, she found 100 more cases that had to be edited and corrected before her data was ready for submission to the NCDB. "I was on the phone with my vendor on a daily basis asking questions and then waiting for answers. The process was very confusing for someone who was doing the Call for Data for the first time".

"Everything about the Call for Data with CNExT is much easier. The NCDB edits help tool provided this year was especially helpful. All you had to do was click on the edit and you had an explanation of what the edit was about. And Technical Support is very responsive".

So, how good was the quality of the data that NUMC submitted for the NCDB 2005 Call for Data? Peggy says it best: "I got the results of my NCDB Call for Data Submission this morning. For all four years there were no errors and no data quality problems. This is a first for us and I owe it all to CNExT!"

We're glad that Peggy is so pleased with our CNEXT software, but we also know that the NUMC Cancer Registry staff played a very big role in those excellent Call for Data results.

Experience the same results on your next Call for Data! Call us today for information about our built-in NCDB edits.

Sign Up for a Free CNExT Demo

Want to see a free internet demo of CNExT features? Click on the link below to register for a 15 minute demo of the Cancer Alert System (CAS), SmartHelp, Built-in Edits and Reports.

https://askcnet.webex.com/meet/Sales Demo