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Liverpool, BC, New South Wales, Australia

Clinical Case-finding System Integrates Information from Three Hospitals, Ten Departments with Elekta Software

 
  • Challenge: Varied, separate information systems and manual data collection caused duplication, errors and missing data, and the U.S. commercial registry product was not compatible with Australian data.
  • Solution: Elekta Cancer Registry Software receives electronic feed from several sources, analyzes the data in detail, runs data cleansing audits and issues reports in appropriate format.
  • Results: SSWAHS now has access to detailed research and analysis of trends, protocols and survival data in several formats.
 Liverpool, BC, New South Wales, Australia

Sydney South West Area Health Service (SSWAHS) Hospital provides timely, high quality, comprehensive and compassionate care to people in the area who are affected by cancer, and to those referred to the facilities for specialized care. With 12 data managers, a hospital executive and many clinicians, researchers and registrars, SSWAHS serves more than 10,000 patients per year, for malignant, non-malignant and hematological conditions, providing treatment, consultations and palliative support.

Sandra Avery, Information Program Manager, Cancer Services, says the service has established a clinical case-finding system that integrates information from more than ten departments and sends data to a full-featured registry and data management system from Elekta Software that simplifies the process of data collection, analysis and reporting. “Our cancer registry software from Elekta Software is able to receive an electronic feed from other sources, extract only the information we need, analyze and clean the data and create reports in any format we need.”

Over a period of 18 months, SSWAHS worked closely with Elekta Software and its own in-house Information Management and Technology department to create a virtual system that enabled data to be compiled in compliance with the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) standards. SSWAHS is the first area health service in Australia that has employed NAACCR standards. Approximately 50 percent of the minimum required dataset is extracted from the three hospital systems, and the remainder is currently added manually. An extract file is laid out according to the NAACCR format and extracts are imported weekly into the registry database from the virtual system when the cases are completed.

“We chose to partner with Elekta Software because of the scope and application of its registry software, its compatibility with other systems and its reporting capability,” says Ms. Avery. “The reporting and analysis of cancer information is the key to the success of this program. The flexibility of the reporting and the ability to add user-defined fields to adapt to Australian standards gave the cancer registry system from Elekta Software the edge over any other products.”

The electronic data transfer is very user-friendly, says Ms. Avery, and has dramatically improved the data quality and overall efficiency at SSWAHS. “We now have detailed research and analysis of treatment trends, protocol usage and comparative survival data by hospital, tumor type, physician and other variables.”

“Our experience with Elekta service has been very positive—even with the difficulties in time differences. Our questions have been answered promptly and our requests handled accordingly.” says Ms. Avery.  

  

Site Snapshot

 

Location: Liverpool, BC, New South Wales, Australia

Center Type: Hospital

Number of Locations: Three

Clinical with Elekta Software: 2002