Approved Hospital Cancer Program
CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System and Wadley Regional Medical Center
Quality cancer data is central to the nation’s cancer fighting efforts and cancer registrars are the first link in capturing data on patients diagnosed with cancer. “Cancer registrars are the foundation of cancer statistics. Physicians, researchers, health care administrators and standard setters rely on accurate cancer data every day – a commitment cancer registrars fulfill.
UAMS AHEC Southwest Cancer Registry is celebrating our twentieth year, since 1989, of collecting data in Texarkana and is the only resource of cancer statistics in our community” said Dianne Ketchum, CTR, Director of the UAMS AHEC Southwest Cancer Registry. “The Cancer Registry coordinates the CoC Approved Program for CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System and Wadley Regional Medical Center and is ranked high in compliance across the nation in the benchmarking of local data against all CoC Approved Programs”.
The mission of the CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System and Wadley Regional Medical Center Cancer Programs is to provide quality comprehensive care, including state-of-the-art services and equipment. These programs provide a multidisciplinary team approach to cancer care to coordinate the best treatment options available with access to cancer-related education and support services. Emphasis on quality measures are ongoing in these cancer programs to monitor and improve cancer care and to provide quality care close to home for patients in the community.
In 1956 the Commission on Cancer approved standards for requirements to include the Cancer Registry as a mandatory component of the Approval process. Since that time Approved Cancer programs are maintained by a cancer registry and cancer registrars. These groups of professionals are trained in the collection of cases by age, sex, county, site and histology. In earlier year’s data elements were counted by hand, graphs were drawn by hand and annual reports were typed manually. Survival statistics were kept on a manual sheet with rows and columns for tracking. Follow-up files were placed on a 3x5 card by month. These files, called tickler files, were used to decease the patients in early years by simply moving one 3x5 card to another file.
Although there were few data elements collected in 1989, they were accurate in registering the number of cases seen in our community. A total of 27 fields were collected initially and in 2009, over 200 data fields are now being collected.
The Cancer Registry is located on the 3rd Floor of UAMS AHEC Southwest. For more information, please call 870-779-6084.
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