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Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), Zion, IL, has
received American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC)
approval since first surveyed, but the role of registry was
confined to routine reporting, according to Norine Oplt, CTR,
who joined the center in 2000. Starting in medical records in
1978, she has worked in the registry field in community
hospitals, leading pediatric facilities, and private consulting.
Experiencing registry at all levels convinced her of registry’s
potential to make a difference in patient care. Oplt’s acting on
that belief led to CTCA’s receiving the CoC “Outstanding
Achievement Award,” presented this year for the first time.
Data Reveals Reality
When Oplt joined CTCA, its reputation for “always hope”
attracted many end-stage patients and those with rare tumor
types, complex presentations, and long histories of multiple
therapies. ”The center had been without a registrar for a while,
and the lack of preconceptions about cancer registries gave me
the opportunity to show more of what it could do,” says Oplt.
When she ran the registry numbers, the data revealed that CTCA
also treated many early stage patients. This discovery, which
flew in the face of current perceptions, caused physicians to
shift their thinking and soon word of mouth spurred the number
of analytic patients.
User-defined Fields
On Oplt’s recommendation, in 2001 CTCA replaced its registry
software with IMPAC software. “The reporting capabilities of our
previous software were too limited to tell us what we needed to
know. I’d used IMPAC for many years elsewhere and liked its
user-friendliness and powerful reporting capabilities.” The
IMPAC system now serves as the core dataset for all research
projects. “Before physicians even open a protocol, they check to
see if we can support the eligibility requirements. The
user-defined fields let us capture information with all the
specificity we want—data for which there would be no other place
in other systems —and assign both alpha and numeric codes. In
two keystrokes, I learn everything about patients on a
particular protocol. And owing to our ability to flag patients
and capture data that might not have routinely made it into an
abstract, we can be confident that studies truly compare apples
to apples,” explains Oplt.
Improved Outreach, Increased Revenue
CTCA has grown from handling about 400 cases in 2000 to just
under 900 in 2004, “something three registrars couldn’t have
done without IMPAC,” believes Olpt. CTCA’s parent organization
has since implemented the system at its Tulsa hospital and plans
to implement it in additional facilities too. CTCA’s newest
project is to identify patients needing follow-up care and
generate letters to them at appropriate intervals. “With other
systems, you enter only one action at a time; if there’s no
response, you start over. IMPAC allows us to identify patients
eligible for our Aftercare Program. Once identified, the systems
allows us the ability to design letters, and have those letters
sent to patients at pre-defined times.” Tailored follow-up will
improve patient outcomes and increase center revenue. Oplt adds,
“We’re what a cancer registry should be, so we must have
software that can keep up.”
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