NAACCR | North American Association of Central Cancer Registries

Over the past year, NAACCR’s Board and staff along with numerous volunteers have focused on reviewing existing committee/work group structures. A new committee model has been developed - one that aligns with the NAACCR Strategic Management Plan , provides greater flexibility to address future emerging issues and is focused on using your volunteer time effectively. This is an opportunity to learn about our new Steering Committees, Priority Area Networks and how you as a member can stay involved as a volunteer.

• Reshaping NAACCR Committees - Recording
• Reshaping NAACCR Committees - Slides
• Reshaping NAACCR Committees - Q and A
• Reshaping NAACCR Committees - Steering Committee Members

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) held a Meaningful Use (MU) Town Hall Meeting with the cancer community on Friday, March 1st, 2013. This meeting provided information on activities for implementation of cancer reporting from Eligible Professional Electronic Health Records (EHRs) to state cancer registries as part of MU Stage 2. Several documents were reviewed and discussed during this call.

• Meaningful Use Town Hall - Slides
• Meaningful Use Town Hall - Audio Recording (Warning: Large file [77MB])
• Meaningful Use Town Hall - FAQs
• Meaningful Use Town Hall - Identifying External Partnerships
• Meaningful Use Town Hall - Quality Assurance Testing Guide
• Meaningful Use Town Hall - Provider Site Responsibilities and Contact Information
• Meaningful Use Town Hall - Identification of State EHR Vendors
• Meaningful Use Town Hall - Guidance for Implementation
• Meaningful Use Town Hall - Transport Options

This webinar describes the process for creating a CONCORD-2 Study file. Chris Johnson from the Cancer Data Registry of Idaho explains the data extraction program that reads a NAACCR file and outputs a CONCORD-2 file. Ron Dewar from the Nova Scotia Surveillance and Epidemiology Unit discussed issues related to preparing data from the Canadian cancer registries.

• Webinar Recording
• Data Extraction Webinar Slides
• Data Extraction Webinar Q and A
• Data Extraction Webinar Case Selection Criteria
• Data Extraction Webinar Files for GenEDITS Plus (EMF/RMF)

The following SAS program has been developed to create a CONCORD-2 file. The program will generate 10 data files for cancer cases diagnosed in your catchment area with one each of 10 index cancers between 1995 through 2009 according to IACR multiple primary rules.

• Data Extraction Webinar SAS File

This was the 2nd of two webinars to provide vendors, software developers, and registry managers.  The main objective was to provide information related to and example of successful implementation of Collaborative Stage. This webinar provided two demonstrations of implementations related to Collaborative Stage and a demonstration of the NAACCR Website for anonymous vendor feedback.

• The SEER*Abs system in relation to Collaborative Stage
• The SEER API and Collaborative Stage
• The NAACCR Website for Vendor/User Feedback on CSv2

The recording and slides from this webinar are posted below.

• CS Vendor Webinar Part 2 Recording
• CS Vendor Webinar Part 2 Slides

This 90-minute webinar focused on:

• Practical, easy enhancements that can make vendors’ CSv2 implementation software more user-friendly by leveraging existing CS functions.
• Demonstrations of CDC and NCI software products that illustrate effective implementations of CSv2 data collection systems.
• Demonstrations of CDC and NCI software products that illustrate effective implementations of CSv2 data collection systems.

The recording and Q&A from this webinar are posted below.

• CS Vendor Webinar Part 1 Recording (ARF)
• CS Vendor Webinar Part 1 Questions and Answers
• CS Vendor Webinar Part 1 Slides

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) Notices of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) for Meaningful Use Stage 2 were officially released in the Federal Register on March 7th, 2012. The deadline for providing comments is May 7, 2012 at 5:00pm EDT. We hope that you will take the time to review and provide comments on the cancer reporting objective in the CMS NPRM, the cancer reporting standard in the ONC NPRM, and the Implementation Guide for Healthcare Provider Reporting to Central Cancer Registries referenced in the ONC NPRM and available on the CDC website. All comments must go through the comment process described in the NPRMs. A courtesy copy of your comments can be sent to CDC at cancerehrreporting@cdc.gov. Positive comments as well as constructive critique are welcomed.

To help provide registries with more information about these three documents, assist with navigation through them, and answer any technical questions, NAACCR and CDC held a Town Hall Meeting on March 19, 2012. A recording of the town hall, a copy of the slides presented, and the Q&A are posted below.

• Meaningful Use Town Hall Webinar Recording
• Meaningful Use Town Hall Slides
• Meaningful Use Town Hall Questions and Answers

The Collaborative Stage Workgroup presented a webinar on Thursday, November 17 for CS vendors, software developers, and registry managers. The focus of the webinar was on the upcoming release of CS version 02.04, and highlighted the changes incorporated into this new release.

• CS v02.04 for Developers and IT Staff Recording (ARF WebEx Recording)
• CS v02.04 for Developers and IT Staff Slides
• CS v02.04 for Developers and IT Staff Q and A

Using this tool, NAACCR members can easily compute shortest travel time or distance between two locations, for instance, residence at diagnosis and treatment center. The resultant data enable researchers to evaluate the impact of travel time or distance on cancer outcomes, such as stage at diagnosis, treatment received, or survival.

During this audio/video enabled WebEx conference, members of the NAACCR GIS Committee will present how the system works to the broader NAACCR community. Presenters at this meeting will include Recinda Sherman – GIS Committee Chair (Florida Cancer Data Systems); Frank Boscoe, Kevin Henry, and Chris Johnson – the authors of two research papers already published using the Shortest Path Tool (New York Cancer Registry, University of Utah, and Cancer Data Registry of Idaho, respectively); and, Daniel Goldberg – developer of the shortest path tool (University of Southern California Spatial Sciences Institute and Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance Program). Recinda will provide an overall context for the tool, Chris, Frank and Kevin will describe how the tool can be used in research studies, and Dan will provide a hands-on demonstration of how the tool operates. The Town Hall is appropriate for all members of the NAACCR community and particularly for researchers, analysts, and managers interested in studies addressing the influence of distance on cancer diagnosis, progression, and survival.

• Shortest Path Webinar Recording (ARF WebEx Recording)
• Shortest Path Webinar Slides

The NAACCR Discharge Data Work Group, the National Program of Cancer Registries-Advancing E-cancer Reporting and Registry Operations (NPCR-AERRO) and the National Association of Health Data Organizations (NAHDO) have been working together on a hospital discharge data project. Hospital discharge data, all-payer claims data and cancer registry data have typically been used as separate resources for understanding cancer prevalence, incidence, resource use, quality of care and cost. There are opportunities to link these sources to further address important questions for cancer researchers, epidemiologists, health services researchers, policy makers, and program managers.

The purpose of this project was two-fold. First, a gap analysis was conducted to address data elements that could be standardized, added or improved between these data types. Second, an examination of the types of questions that could be answered, using combined databases, was developed. Recommendations on the GAP analysis are found in the NAACCR-UB-GAP document (this document will be provided prior to the town hall meeting); this document addresses a prioritized list of questions. In addition, for those questions given high priority, we provide the key data elements necessary to answer the question. This paper was produced by NAHDO. State agency, federal staff, and work group members provided NAHDO with input on the gaps, priorities, and limitations of the data sources.

The NAACCR Town Hall gave NAHDO staff the opportunity to present their documents to the NAACCR membership. The meeting fostered an exchange of ideas and allowed members to ask questions of the NAHDO experts.

• Captioned Webinar Recording (WRF)

The NAACCR Nominating Committee and the NAACCR Board of Directors presented a webinar describing the NAACCR Board of Directors nomination and election process. This webinar was free for the members of NAACCR to attend.

• 2011 Nomination and Election Town Hall Presentation

CSv2 Team Members presented a free webinar for cancer registry software vendors, central registry managers and IT staff on Wednesday November 17, 2010. The main focus of this webinar was the release of CSv2 version 02.03.00 and the schema updates resulting from the validation project.

• Download Webinar

Occupational workplace exposures are recognized as an important cancer risk factor. Cancer registry data may be a source for occupational cancer surveillance. In an effort to improve the completeness, quality and consistency of these data, NAACCR and CDC NIOSH created the webinar, “Collection and Use of Industry and Occupation (I & O) Data”.

• Download Webinar

NAACCR presented a webinar to the NAACCR membership on the Death Clearance Manual. The webinar live webinar was held Wednesday, March 10, 2010 1:00 pm ET. A copy of the recording, slides from the webinar and the Q&A are available using the link below.

• Download Webinar/Materials