Cancer cases continue to grow as Q-Centrix reveals how addressing
hospital data backlogs has the power to save lives
CHICAGO, November 13, 2024—Q-Centrix, the country’s largest oncology data management provider, has found that most hospitals face at least a one-year data backlog in oncology. As a result, clinical teams don’t have access to their most valuable assets when making both current and future patient decisions: clinical data.
Up-to-date clinical data is essential for ongoing research and treatment evaluations. While a one-year data gap may not seem like a lot, the fact that the FDA reported 83 oncology-related approvals in 2023 clearly demonstrates that the impact is substantial. This is especially important given the life-saving potential and frequency of these trials.
If a program falls behind in submitting data to registries, patients may miss out on receiving treatments within critical time windows. This can compromise their care. For instance, the Commission on Cancer (CoC), a consortium of professional organizations dedicated to improving the survival and quality of life for patients, provides dashboards to ensure patients receive treatment within the recommended time frames. This leads to significantly better patient outcomes. However, these dashboards rely on timely data submission. Cancer programs with data backlogs lose their ability to identify and address treatment gaps in real time. This can, and does, change the trajectory of a patient’s care.
Hospitals with data backlogs also run the risk of losing their accreditation status. When this happens, patients are more likely to travel further for the quality of cancer care they require. Moreover, as access to CoC-accredited hospitals is linked to reducing disparities in cancer care, losing accreditation may increase barriers to quality care for vulnerable populations and widen existing health equity gaps.
Timely data submission relies heavily on experienced oncology clinical teams, who play a crucial role in managing hospital cancer data. New cancer cases are expected to continue to grow, thus creating a larger volume of data for cancer registrars to manage. The American Cancer Society expects that about two million new cancer cases will be diagnosed in 2024 alone. The combination of rising cancer cases with the ongoing healthcare labor shortage means that finding enough qualified oncology clinical professionals is becoming increasingly more difficult. For that reason, Q-Centrix founded the Q-Centrix Institute (QCI), a CoC-compliant program that provides oncology clinical data expertise through a mix of classroom and hands-on, application-based learning.
“Q-Centrix works with over 250 oncology programs, so we have seen first-hand that collecting, reviewing, and submitting registry data is very time-consuming,” said Karen Schmidt, VP Oncology Market Lead at Q-Centrix. “The top priority for clinical teams is always going to be patient care. When they’re balancing a lot of competing priorities, it’s easy to fall behind on tasks like data submission.”
New treatments and advances in cancer research are constantly emerging data from ClinicalTrials.gov shows that there are currently more than 32,000 active cancer studies. Nearly twenty-five percent of these are observational studies which rely on existing patient data. This is another reason why accurate, up-to-date clinical data is critical for new treatments, which once again underscores the importance of addressing backlogs.
It's clear that a shift is needed in the way the industry looks at oncology data. Historical treatment plans are still extremely important in guiding future treatment decisions, however, it is critical that we do more with the data in real time, to ensure the best possible outcomes.
ABOUT Q-CENTRIX:
Q-Centrix sees clinical data differently—as custom data sets with infinite possibilities.
Providing the industry’s first Enterprise Clinical Data Management (eCDM™) platform, Q-Centrix combines AI-enabled technology, the largest and broadest team of clinical data experts, data, and insights from its more than 1,200 partners to help improve patient outcomes and drive process and performance improvement, strategic growth, and operational efficiency.
Its solutions address a variety of clinical data needs, including quality measurement and improvement, cardiovascular, oncology, trauma, research, and more.
For more information about Q-Centrix, visit www.q-centrix.com.
Published by: Adam Torkildson