NCRA issued a policy statement on Monitoring Changes in Cancer Registry Operations to outline the vital role cancer registrars play in the abstraction process and collection process. The recent shift in the relationship between the cancer registry profession and technology has been precipitated by an emerging capability of EHR software. EHR vendors offer the possibility to map from the EHR’s data fields to the cancer abstract’s data fields in a simulation of the cancer registrar’s abstraction process. CEOs and administrators are challenged to maximize care and minimize cost, so the promises of EHR vendors are appealing and motivated by a need to conserve operational resources within the competitive and rapidly changing oncology service line.

It is the position of NCRA that before implementation of technological advancements, specifically automated abstraction, they must meet the minimum standards of representing patient case data with fidelity and predictability. Fidelity is the degree to which the data represents the actual case history of the patient. Predictability is the percent of occurrences in which the abstract will be accurate. NCRA believes that any technology that does not meet this dual threshold should not be promoted and brought to scale as a functional alternative to direct abstraction. The quality proposition of the abstraction process managed by the cancer registrar serves as a benchmark that must be met or exceeded by new technology. Once met, the profession looks forward to a day when the cancer registrar may be a “data curator” continuing the tradition of partnership in cancer data collection. 

• Monitoring Changes in Cancer Registry Operations (2017)
• The Role of the Cancer Registrar in Cancer Data Abstraction (2017)