Q. What are Level II data?
A. Level II data, which are separate from Level I data (resource and service information), are cancer cases diagnosed and treated at your hospital within a specific time period.
Your hospital’s cancer caseload, as submitted to the National Cancer Data Base, is run through our internal processing, categorized by site and stage, and displayed in a distribution table within FIPS. Level II data does NOT include patient characteristics, treatment, or outcome data.
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Q. How are Level II data presented?
A. Level II data are displayed by anatomic site and stage. Here is an example:
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Q. Where are Level II data posted?
A. Level II data are posted in the Facility Information Profile System (FIPS) for review by your cancer program, and upon release by your hospital, they are subsequently posted on the American Cancer Society Web site at cancer.org.
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Q. How often are Level II data posted to FIPS?
A. Level II data are posted every year, after the Annual Call for Data is completed and processed. This tends to be in the first quarter of each year.
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Q. How does our cancer program know if Level II data have been posted to FIPS?
A. When a new Level II data table is posted to FIPS, the cancer registrar receives an e-mail notification from FIPS@facs.org
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Q. Who can access and release Level II data?
A. Any designated cancer program staff member that has access to CoC Datalinks can access FIPS and release Level II data after review and approval by the hospital cancer committee. A valid User ID and Password are required. If you have a question about your log in information, please e-mail CoCDatalinks@facs.org.
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Q. How do we review Level II data?
A. In order to review Level II data, follow these simple steps:
- Go to CoC Datalinks.
- Enter your personal User ID and Password.
- From the Activity Menu, click on "Cases Reported to the NCDB by Site and Stage."
- Review the data table for accuracy.
- Have the cancer committee take action on the release of this data.
- Indicate your hospital's decision by choosing one of the three buttons shown on the screen.
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Q. How does our hospital indicate its decision about Level II data?
A. Each year after new data are posted to FIPS, your cancer committee must indicate whether it chooses to release Level II data to the American Cancer Society. Regardless of whether or not your hospital chooses to release Level II data, a designated CoC Datalinks user must indicate the decision within FIPS every year by choosing one of three buttons:
- Enter the type of patients served and the year in which your hospital began treating cancer patients in the appropriate fields near the top of the page.
- Write a descriptive narrative about your hospital that the public will read. This will appear above the Site by Stage Table on the ACS Web site.
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Q. How does our hospital release Level II data to the American Cancer Society?
A. Simply click on the box at the top of the page/table that reads Accurate Release to ACS. Your hospital's Level II data will be shared with the ACS within 24 hours of your release.
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Q. How do we know whether or not our hospital’s Level II data have been released to the ACS?
A. Once the decision on whether or not to release your hospital's Level II data has been made and this decision is indicated by clicking on one of three buttons at the top of the page/table, a notification will appear at the top of the FIPS page indicating the action your hospital has taken. If no action has been taken to either release or not release the Level II data, the notification will indicate that the data remain in draft form and the section in FIPS titled "Cases Reported to the NCDB by Site and Stage" will remain purple.
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Q. Is there a deadline to release Level II data?
A. A six-week deadline for action on Level II data is established when the data are posted to FIPS and the e-mail notification has been sent. We do ask cancer committees to take action at the earliest convenience as this will allow patients to see the most current data from a hospital in a timely manner.
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Q. What happens to our hospital’s old Level II data?
A. If the hospital chooses not to release the latest Level II data but had released last year's data, and then last year's data will remain posted on the ACS Web site until December 31st. However, if the hospital did not release the previous year's data, no Level II data will display and the user will not see a link titled "Annual Caseload" on the ACS Web site.
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Q. Why are there differences between the FIPS data table and the NCDB data submission summary?
A. Minor discrepancies may exist between the FIPS data table and the registry data submission summary report; however, be assured that the data presented have received intense quality review. The FIPS data table represents a cumulative total of analytic cases accessioned in the current year's NCDB Call for Data as reported by your cancer registry.
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Q. What does our hospital do to correct major differences with Level II data?
A. If significant data differences are found in the FIPS data table, please e-mail FIPS@facs.org and our staff will assist in reviewing your hospital’s Level II data and previous NCDB submissions. You may wish to look at the NCDB submission history (from the CoC Datalinks Activity Menu) and examine the edits and number of records that were rejected. You may also wish to examine the Site-Stage report in this area. Please note that the NCDB Site-Stage report is not intended to match the FIPS Level II data table. The NCDB report serves as a "receipt" and accounting tool of your data submission to the NCDB, which is based solely on the ICD-O Site Codes.
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Q. Why are there no Level II data available for our hospital?
A. A Level II data table may not be available in FIPS for one of three reasons: 1) NCDB staff has received the data submission and have encountered technical difficulties in loading and processing the data, 2) the data have been received and processed, but not yet posted to FIPS, or 3) no data submission has been received from your hospital’s registry. To confirm which of these three conditions pertains to your hospital, please contact us at FIPS@facs.org.
Note: If technical problems have been experienced in loading data, NCDB staff has been in contact with your hospital to notify it of the nature of the problem.
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Q. How does the public locate our hospital data on the American Cancer Society's Web site?
A. You can see how the public will view your hospital's data on the ACS Web site by following either of the two steps below:
- Log on to www.cancer.org
- Under “Managing Your Cancer Experience,” select “Make Treatment Decisions” and press the Go button.
- Click on "Making Treatment Decisions"
- Click on "Find Treatment Centers"
- Click on "Find a Cancer Hospital"
- Enter a zip code, city and state, or hospital name, and click the “Go” button
- You can sort the results by city or by hospital name
- Select a CoC-approved cancer program and click on the link for "Services available" to see the resources and services offered at the hospital.
- The “View Glossary” link defines the resources and services
- The “Annual Caseload” link will appear if your hospital has released its Level II data.
- Log on to Find a Cancer Hospital Locator
Enter your hospital’s zip code, city and state, or hospital name. Specify a radius up to 200 miles and click "Go." A list of CoC-approved cancer programs will appear. Under each hospital you’ll see several links: Click on the link "Services available" to view the patient resources and services offered at the hospital. Click on “View Glossary” to see definitions for the resources and services. If the hospital chooses to release its cancer caseload data, a third link titled "Annual Caseload" will appear. If the hospital chooses not to release this data, the "Annual Caseload" link will not appear.
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Q. How does the public use Level II data?
A. Patients use the Find a Cancer Hospital Locator on the ACS Web site to search for treatment facilities in their area. Once a location is designated and a list of CoC-approved cancer programs appears, the patient can use Level II data to ask the cancer care team questions about their experience in treating specific cancers.
To help educate patients about the intended use of these data, the CoC includes a disclaimer on the ACS Web site that pops up on the link to “Annual Caseload.” The disclaimer reads:
- Number of cancer cases diagnosed and treated recently at this hospital
- The Annual Caseload link takes you to a table identifying the types of cancer cases diagnosed and treated at a particular hospital within a given year. The table lists the number and percent of cancer cases diagnosed by type and stage of cancer (Stage I, II, III, IV, and Unknown.) Cancer is “staged” according to how much cancer there is in the body and where it is located. Keep in mind that some cancer cases cannot be staged or have an unknown stage.
- For further information on cancer staging, go to www.cancerstaging.org
- Go to Annual Caseload for this hospital
Another disclaimer appears at the top of the Level II chart for each hospital:
- About these data: Number of patients by cancer type and stage of disease
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The American Cancer Society (ACS) along with the Commission on Cancer (CoC) of the American College of Surgeons present these data to help patients make educated decisions about their cancer care. This information may help you prepare questions for the cancer care team—for example about their experience in treating specific cancers and what the next steps might be. The ACS and CoC encourage you to review this data in conjunction with data provided by the ACS Cancer Facts and Figures and information on your cancer treatment options provided by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN).
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| Choosing a treatment center |
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Many people might assume that the best place to have their treatment is in a hospital that has treated the largest number of patients with a similar medical situation. However, this decision is complex because there are many factors that influence the number of patients seen at a hospital, and the number of patients does not necessarily reflect the quality of care provided by a hospital. Some things that affect the numbers include, but are not limited to, patient demographics, disease type, and the experience of the doctors, nurses, and other health care workers caring for the patient. Be sure to consult with your cancer care team before deciding on your personal course of action.
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| About this hospital: |
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The CoC provides the opportunity to enter a narrative, which can further describe the unique strengths and features of the cancer program and information not otherwise captured in FIPS. This information will appear above the data table on the ACS Web site.
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Q. How can the hospital cancer program use Level II data?
A. Hospitals can use Level II data as a quality improvement tool to identify gaps in care and/or the need for:
- support services based on frequently diagnosed cancers
- prevention activities for the community
- early detection projects to address late stage diagnoses
- collaboration with community agencies.
Your feedback is always welcome. Please feel free to forward your comments, questions and suggestions to FIPS@facs.org.
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Revised March 25, 2008
FIPS
Commission on Cancer
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