Availability and Usability of the Hospital-based Cancer Registry Data for Measuring the Quality Outcome Indicators of Healthcare Provided to Breast and Colorectal Cancer Patients at King Hussein Cancer Center

Healthcare performance assessment to improve quality of care is an important task for every healthcare facility. King Hussein Cancer Center (KHCC) is a leading comprehensive cancer centers in the Middle East with a hospital-based cancer registry established in 2006. The objective of this study was to assess the availability and completeness of healthcare quality indicators for breast and colorectal cancers in the KHCC cancer registry. Data items for measurement of quality indicators were extracted from KHCC Clinical Practice Guidelines, the Rapid Quality Reporting System and from published studies. Availability and usability (completeness) of these items in the registry data were examined. Confounding factors that might affect healthcare outcome were also analyzed. Most of the data items extracted from the three sources were available in the registry (40/45 for breast and 40/51 for colorectal). Among the available items, the percentage of completeness was very high (31/40 items complete at more than 90% for breast and 34/40 for colorectal). Only 5 out of all 80 available data items were less than 50% complete. For most of the data items with low percentage of completeness, there is a plausible explanation. Interestingly, all performance indicators specified in the KHCC Clinical Practice Guidelines can be calculated using data from the registry. It can be concluded that the cancer registry is a potential tool for healthcare performance assessment at KHCC. Future work will include an update of data items in the registry and collaboration with other stakeholders at KHCC for the integration of the cancer registry with other health information platforms at KHCC and the development of an automated algorithm for routine reporting of healthcare performance indicators using the cancer registry data.