California Cancer Reporting System Standards Volume I: Abstracting and Coding Procedures for Hospitals
Not all abstracting requirements apply to free-standing radiation therapy centers and other cancer treatment centers that are not part of hospitals and do not have inpatient facilities. Usually, patients seen at these facilities have been hospitalized elsewhere previously, and the treatment center is not the primary source for detailed information about their diagnostic work-ups. However, case reports from such facilities afford a quality check on the hospitals' reports and, even more important, provide data that complete the information about the patient's first course of treatment. Without these reports, statewide data on patterns of care would not be accurate or clinically useful.
When submitting abstracts, treatment centers must provide complete patient identification and treatment information, but they are not required to fill in text fields for diagnostic procedures that were performed elsewhere (see Section IV.1). Recording stage is also important. When planning treatment, the radiation therapist often performs the most thorough assessment of stage available for the case.
The treatment center's abstract must be prepared in the same electronic format used by other facilities, although many of the data fields may be left blank or coded as unknown. Required data are listed in Appendix U.