The growing use of oral systemic therapies and transition of some cancer treatments to the outpatient setting makes capturing all cancer case patients more difficult. We aim to develop algorithms to identify potentially missed incident case patients and estimate impact on incidence rates. We reviewed claims from SEER-Medicare 5% noncancer control patient sample to identify potentially missed chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and bladder case patients based on diagnosis codes, cancer-related treatments, and oncology consultations. Observed rates of definite missed CML and definite and probable missed bladder case patients were calculated and the impact of missed case patients of these two cancers on SEER 65+ incidence rates were estimated. From 2008 to 2015, the algorithm estimated 781 definite CML case patients missed, increasing the number by 10.7%. From 2007 to 2015, the algorithm estimated 4629 definite and 5772 probable bladder case patients missed, increasing the number by 3.8% to 8.1%. Our algorithms offer potential methods for identifying missed case patients and validating the completeness of cancer registries.
Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Monographs. 2020 May 01 [Epub]
Clara J K Lam, Joan L Warren, Matthew Nielsen, Angela Smith, Eric Boyd, Michael J Barrett, Angela B Mariotto
Data Analytics Branch, Surveillance Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, MD., Healthcare Assessment Research Branch, Healthcare Delivery Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, MD., UNC Department of Urology Oncology, UNC Lineberger Cancer Center, Chapel Hill, NC., Information Management Services, Inc., Calverton, MD.