The Commission on Cancer outlined its 2020 updated standards with the goals of establishing consistency with the structure of quality programs across the American College of Surgeons and ensuring standards result in the improvement of patient care.
The updates are based on 6 principles:
After the updates were announced by the American College of Surgeons, we hosted a webinar with Dr. William Dooley, Surgical Oncologist at the University of Oklahoma and Commission on Cancer Surveyor, and Kelly Hall, former oncology administrator and Vice President of Commercial Operations at CancerIQ. The webinar focused on Commission on Cancer Standard 4.4 and debuted a tool to meet this standard. Here's a few highlights from the webinar.
This post provides an overview of Standard 4.4, how you can meet the standard, and how incorporating software can help oncology leaders easily demonstrate compliance with these new standards.
Dr. Dooley defined cancer risk assessment and genetic counseling as, “The processes to identify and counsel people at risk for familial or hereditary cancer syndromes.”
The major purposes of cancer genetics include:
To meet standard 4.4, you must develop the proper policy and procedure for your cancer risk assessment services, both for your on-site services and/or referral services.
The correct cancer risk assessment services policy and procedure must include:
After you have developed your policy and procedure, your cancer committee needs to evaluate your cancer risk assessment program.
According to Dr. Dooley, “Cancer risk assessment and genetic counseling are performed by a genetic professional with an educational background in cancer genetics and hereditary cancer syndromes. Specialized training in cancer genetics is required.”
The American College of Surgeons defines a genetic professional as one of the following:
It's important to note your genetic professionals do not need to be on-site. However, if you identify a referral provider, you still need to show they meet criteria.
Each year, your cancer committee must evaluate your cancer risk assessment program. Aside from meeting the criteria mentioned above, you must report on certain metrics.
Dr. Dooley explained your cancer committee evaluation has to answer the following questions:
He states,
"A correct answer when you do an evaluation for any of the CoC Standards will be a data dense statement that is a series of numerators and denominators."
Evaluating your genetic counseling and risk management services involves 3 steps:
The most time consuming aspect of the evaluation is reviewing patient compliance by reporting patient metrics. While tracking and reporting patient metrics is important for accreditation purposes, it also allows you to recognize gaps and allocate resources to appropriate places.
After Dr. Dooley's overview of Standard 4.4, Kelly Hall debuted a solution CancerIQ clients can use to not only improve the productivity of their genetic counseling program, but demonstrate how their program is aligned with Standard 4.4.
We understand this final step of reporting metrics is time consuming, so we designed a tool to track and report information for you automatically. The CancerIQ Analytics Module generates all patient metrics needed to meet Standard 4.4 allowing you to recognize gaps, allocate resources where appropriate, and use your time to assess the effective of your program.
In addition to meeting CoC Standard 4.4, the CancerIQ Analytics Module offers benchmarking with other centers, which further arms you with information to target areas for improvement.
Learn more about how CancerIQ clients are able to easily generate reports for the new standard in the webinar - Going Above and Beyond CoC Standard 4.4 - Genetics and Risk Assessment.