New Directions to be Revealed During March 1-4 ACS Conference in Atlanta

If you are a registrar, administrator, quality officer, program director, Cancer Liaison Physician, or other professional who treats cancer patients, we look forward to seeing you in Atlanta, March 1-4, where new directions for ACS Cancer Programs will be presented at ACS Cancer Conference: Where Cancer Care Comes Together.

Each January, leaders of the Commission on Cancer (CoC), National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC), National Accreditation Program for Rectal Cancer (NAPRC), American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC), National Cancer Database (NCDB), Cancer Surgery Standards Program (CSSP), and Cancer Research Program (CRP) come together and discuss new directions for the programs.

At this year’s leaders retreat, attention was focused on the needs of the person with cancer; for example, how does the person with cancer experience the value of accreditation and how can we engage the voice of the patient in our quality improvement efforts?  Plans are underway to develop survivorship tools and a cancer survival calculator, modernize the NCDB reporting tools, and provide more support for local quality improvement efforts. You will hear more about these initiatives, and more, at the March conference.

On the practical side, you will not want to miss the basics at the March conference, including how to:

• Participate in the Prompt, Beyond Ask, and/or Breaking Barriers quality improvement projects
• Build a problem statement and conduct a root cause analysis to overcome barriers to synoptic operative reporting
• Achieve compliance with CoC Standard 5.8 Lung Cancer Operative Standard
• Implement the new NAPBC Standards

Looking forward to seeing you in Atlanta!