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Hematologic malignancies: an opportunity to fill a gap in cancer surveillance

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Abstract

Background

Reporting of hematologic malignancies is an increasingly important focus for cancer surveillance. As trends in cancer care are shifting to the outpatient setting, hospital-based data collection methods used for cancer surveillance will result in under-reporting of these cancers. This study describes the testing and validation of an automated system for capturing and reporting cancers from community oncology providers.

Methods

The system was evaluated in 5 oncology practices in two states processing claims data for a 4- or 8-month interval. Resulting cancers were matched with the state registries. A random sample of nonmatched cases was reabstracted to measure the accuracy of the claims data for reporting of hematologic malignancies.

Results

The overall match rate for the 1,935 hematologic malignancies reported during the study period was 58.2 % (range, 37.4 % for CLL to 71.2 % for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma). The overall accuracy rate for billing-reported hematologic malignancies was 95 %. Accuracy among cases that did not match with the cancer registry was 88 %. The estimated number of missed cases for the five participating practices ranged from 0.8 leukemia cases/oncologist/year to 3.4 CLL cases/oncologist/year. The estimated total number of missed cases in the five participating practices was 292 with an interquartile range of 263–323.

Conclusion

As cancer diagnosis and treatment continue migration into ambulatory physician practice settings unreported hematopoietic cases will become increasingly problematic. Leveraging the standardized electronic billing data for automated reporting of cancer cases from physician practices may be an efficient method to reduce this gap in cancer surveillance reporting.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (grant number R21 CA127967-01) and the National Cancer Institute/Information Management Systems, Inc. (Subcontract D5-VCU-1). The authors would like to thank the following participating oncology practices who provided support and data for this study: Dr Gregory Formanek Virginia Physicians Inc., Richmond, VA; Hematology Oncology Patient Enterprises PC, Charlottesville, VA; US Oncology—Cancer Centers of North Carolina, Raleigh and Asheville, NC.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Massey Cancer Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, 730 East Broad Street, Suite 430, Richmond, VA, 23296-0308, USA

    Lynne Penberthy, Chris Gillam & Gordon Ginder

  2. Department of Biostatistics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, 23296-0308, USA

    Donna McClish

  3. Florida Cancer Data System, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA

    Steven Peace

  4. Virginia Cancer Registry, Virginia Department of Health, Richmond, VA, USA

    Laurel Gray & Jim Martin

  5. North Carolina Central Cancer Registry, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Sandra Overton & Soundarya Radhakrishnan

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  1. Lynne Penberthy
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Correspondence to Lynne Penberthy.

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Penberthy, L., McClish, D., Peace, S. et al. Hematologic malignancies: an opportunity to fill a gap in cancer surveillance. Cancer Causes Control 23, 1253–1264 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-012-0003-1

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