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Adherence to National Quality Forum (NQF) colorectal cancer indicators among members of the Florida Initiative for Quality Cancer Care (FIQCC) consortium.

6563 Background: FIQCC is a consortium of 10 institutions participating in a comprehensive practice-based system of quality self-assessment across a number of cancer types. The NQF has endorsed several performance measures to assess the quality of care for colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. We have sought to identify adherence to NQF CRC indicators among members of FIQCC.


METHODS
Comprehensive chart reviews were conducted for all patients with CRC first seen in 2006 by a medical oncologist at one of the 10 FIQCC sites (2 academic/8 community). NQF quality measures included: 1) consideration or administration of chemotherapy to patients with stage III colon cancer (CC); 2) completeness of pathology reporting for CRC; 3) >12 regional lymph nodes (LN) examined for resected CC. Statistical comparisons were performed using chi-squared analysis.


RESULTS
The population consisted of 475 patients (250 men and 225 women) with a median age of 65 years (range 27-92). Chemotherapy was considered/administered in 96.5% (136/141) of stage III CC patients. With respect to CRC pathologic reporting, there was strong compliance (>90%) for reporting the number of LN examined and involved by tumor, proximal/distal margin status, depth of invasion, and histologic grade. However, only 225 of 295 (76.2%) reports documented lymphovascular invasion status. Radial margin status was included for 45% (27/60) of surgical rectal cancer specimens. Only 73.9% (173/234) of CC cases had >12 LN examined. Of the NQF measures, significant differences across practice sites were noted for the reporting of histologic grade (p = 0.0002), proximal/distal margin status (p = 0.049), and lymphovascular invasion (p < 0.0001).


CONCLUSIONS
Although there was uniformly strong adherence to the application of adjuvant therapy for stage III CC across FIQCC sites, the adequacy of lymphadenectomy and LN examination for resected CC was lower and varied considerably across sites. There remains room for improvement of pathologic CRC reporting across the whole consortium as well as at individual sites. The FIQCC initiative allows for the identification of targets for global quality improvement as well as of specific measures for individual institutions. No significant financial relationships to disclose.