The National Cancer Data Base: A Powerful Initiative to Improve Cancer Care in the United States

Abstract

The National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) is a nationwide oncology outcomes database that currently collects information on approximately 70% of all new invasive cancer diagnoses in the United States each year and serves as a powerful clinical surveillance and quality improvement mechanism for cancer programs participating in the American College of Surgeons (ACoS) Commission on Cancer (CoC) approvals program.1-3 Currently, the NCDB receives over one million cancer case reports annually from more than 1,430 hospitals. The NCDB now contains data on more than 21 million cancer patients diagnosed between 1985 and 2005, and is recognized as the largest clinical registry in the world. NCDB data are used to explore trends in cancer care, to examine regional and national benchmarks, and to serve as the basis for quality improvement activities ( http://www.facs.org/cancer/ncdb)The purposes of this review are: (1) to describe the NCDB and the data collected; (2) to discuss how the NCDB can be used to study clinical outcomes and the quality of cancer care in the United States; and (3) to describe the clinical care improvement tools provided by the NCDB and the CoC to participating hospitals.

Extent of Surgery for Papillary Thyroid Cancer Is Not Associated with Survival: An Analysis of 61,775 Patients

“…The NCDB increased data quality-assurance measures starting in 2002. 18 Our findings is consistent with a more recent report from the SEER database by Mendelsohn et al in which they analyzed data of 22,724 patients with papillary thyroid cancer (1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001). They demonstrated that there is no survival difference between lobectomy and total thyroidectomy.…”

A Model to Predict the Use of Surgical Resection for Advanced-Stage Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients

“…Data from the NCDB represent 1,500 Commission on Cancer-accredited facilities including more than 70% of all newly diagnosed cancer cases in the United States. These data are used to track treatments and outcomes as well as provide qualityrelated performance measures [10].…”

“…This approach avoids potential pitfalls of highly curated specialty or institutional databases that may provide granular data but are limited by institutional and referral biases that may limit the generalizability of their findings [10,18].…”

Adrenocortical carcinoma in the United States

“…13 The more than 1450 hospitals approved by the Commission on Cancer are required to report all new cancer diagnoses to the NCDB. These hospitals report approximately 1 million new cancer cases to the NCDB each year, which account for approximately 70% of all cancers diagnosed in the United States annually.…”