A Multidisciplinary Consensus Recommendation on a Synoptic Radiation Treatment Summary: A Commission on Cancer Workgroup Report.

PURPOSE: The radiation treatment summary provides a clinical and technical overview of a patient's full course of radiation therapy. Despite its importance to multiple stakeholders, there is no widely followed radiation treatment summary template. METHODS AND MATERIALS: The Commission on Cancer convened a multistakeholder workgroup to develop a synoptic radiation treatment summary template. The workgroup included individuals with expertise in radiation, medical and surgical oncology, medical physics, oncology informatics, cancer registry, electronic medical record systems, treatment planning systems, and registry information systems. The workgroup iterated a template until consensus was achieved. RESULTS: The consensus radiation treatment summary template is divided into 3 sections that allows for a mix of structured and free text. The first section, "Radiation Course Summary," is meant to provide information that is of broad interest and in a manner that is potentially accessible to patients, their families, and nononcology-trained care team members. The second section, "Anatomic Target Summary," provides information that is potentially useful to oncology-trained care team members who will be primarily interested in which anatomies were irradiated, by what modality, and to what cumulative dose. The third section, "Delivered Prescriptions," summarizes technical information that is primarily of interest and accessible to radiation oncology-trained clinicians, registrars, and researchers. CONCLUSIONS: We have proposed a consensus template with 3 sections to meet the needs of a diverse set of consumers. We recommend that providers, professional societies, and accreditation bodies with interest in the radiation treatment summary continue collaborative efforts to test, iterate, and drive adoption of a synoptic template.

National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers Demonstrates Improved Compliance with Post-Mastectomy Radiation Therapy Quality Measure.

BACKGROUND: The National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC) was established in 2008 by the American College of Surgeons as a quality-improvement program for patients with breast disease. An NAPBC quality measure states post-mastectomy patients with ≥4 positive lymph nodes should receive lymph node radiation therapy (PMRT). Our objective was to examine how NAPBC accreditation has affected compliance with this quality measure. STUDY DESIGN: Women who underwent mastectomy at either an NAPBC-accredited center or a Commission on Cancer-only accredited hospital were identified (2006 to 2013) in the National Cancer Data Base. The NAPBC centers accredited from 2009 to 2011 were included in the analysis. Patients were nested within centers using a mixed effects model to identify PMRT rates at each center before and after accreditation, adjusting for patient and tumor characteristics. RESULTS: Of 34,752 patients from 477 NAPBC-accredited centers and 958 Commission on Cancer-only accredited hospitals who underwent mastectomy with ≥4 positive lymph nodes, 21,638 patients received PMRT during the study period (62.3%). The NAPBC centers yielded a significantly higher rate of PMRT than Commission on Cancer hospitals (66.0% vs 59.2%; p < 0.001). For each year of accreditation (2009 to 2011), centers had significantly higher rates of radiation in the accreditation year compared with the year before accreditation (p < 0.001). Within those centers, the rate of radiation increased post-accreditation in each accreditation year (2009: 62.1% to 71.9%; 2010: 65.5% to 73.2%; 2011: 67.5% to 70.4%). CONCLUSIONS: The NAPBC accreditation is associated with higher PMRT rates and better adherence to the PMRT quality measure. Future studies with more centers and longer follow-up are needed to determine whether this trend continues.