Results of Cancer Care Quality Study Lead to Cautious Optimism, Caveats

Extract

Many people with breast or colorectal cancer appear to be getting medical care according to national guidelines for treatment, according to initial findings from a large national study of the quality of care received by people with cancer. The results were widely viewed as surprising because a 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine had suggested that there were potentially important gaps in the quality of cancer care.

In fact, both the researchers who presented the work and those who heard the presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in New Orleans in June were quick to add caveats to the positive data, such as concerns that patients who died before they were contacted—and thus were not included in the study—might have gotten poorer quality care.

Concerns about the quality of cancer care prompted ASCO and several other specialty societies to establish the National Initiative on Cancer Care Quality (NICCQ). The researchers turned to breast and colon cancer first, both because they affect large numbers of people and because a number of quality measures were well established for these cancers. At the 2003 ASCO meeting, the NICCQ team reported that, according to questionnaires, patients were generally satisfied with the quality of cancer care they received (see News, Aug. 20, 2003, Vol. 95, No. 16, p. 1188). This year, they reported the initial findings from an analysis of the individual medical records.