CTR Follow-Up & Data Management 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A cancer registry receives a returned mail piece for a patient last seen 3 years ago. What is the FIRST recommended step to locate the patient?
- Contact the patient's physician of record (Correct answer)
- Search the Social Security Death Index
- Send a follow-up letter to the patient's last known address
- Request records from the state vital statistics office
Correct answer: Contact the patient's physician of record
Contacting the physician of record is the first recommended step because the provider may have current contact information or updated address details.
Question 2: Which federal legislation most directly governs the sharing of patient follow-up information between cancer registries across state lines?
- HIPAA Privacy Rule
- Cancer Registries Amendment Act (CRAA) (Correct answer)
- Affordable Care Act
- Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA)
Correct answer: Cancer Registries Amendment Act (CRAA)
The Cancer Registries Amendment Act (CRAA) specifically authorizes data sharing among central cancer registries for follow-up and research purposes.
Question 3: A patient's follow-up status is coded 'lost to follow-up.' Which condition best defines this status?
- Patient refused further contact
- Patient moved out of the country
- Patient cannot be located after exhausting all available tracing resources (Correct answer)
- Patient died before follow-up was attempted
Correct answer: Patient cannot be located after exhausting all available tracing resources
Lost to follow-up means all reasonable tracing efforts have been exhausted without establishing contact or determining vital status.
Question 4: In abstracting follow-up data, the date of last contact should reflect:
- The date the registry mailed the last follow-up letter
- The most recent date the patient was known to be alive (Correct answer)
- The date of the patient's last oncology visit only
- The date the follow-up was entered into the registry database
Correct answer: The most recent date the patient was known to be alive
Date of last contact represents the most recent documented date the patient was confirmed to be alive, regardless of the source.
Question 5: Which data quality measure specifically evaluates whether registry follow-up rates meet NPCR/SEER completeness benchmarks?
- Mortality-to-incidence ratio
- Percentage of cases with follow-up within the past 15 months (Correct answer)
- Stage distribution completeness
- Percentage of microscopically confirmed cases
Correct answer: Percentage of cases with follow-up within the past 15 months
Registries are evaluated on the percentage of living cases with documented contact within the past 15 months to ensure follow-up completeness.
Question 6: A patient is found in the National Death Index (NDI) with a cause of death listed as 'cardiac arrest.' The primary cancer was colon. How should the cancer registrar code the vital status?
- Alive
- Dead — cancer as underlying cause
- Dead — other cause (Correct answer)
- Dead — cause unknown
Correct answer: Dead — other cause
When NDI identifies the cause of death as a non-cancer condition, vital status is coded dead with another cause, not the cancer.
Question 7: Which of the following is an advantage of passive follow-up over active follow-up in a hospital cancer registry?
- Higher contact rates with living patients
- Lower resource expenditure through linkage with existing databases (Correct answer)
- More accurate date-of-last-contact documentation
- Better compliance with HIPAA requirements
Correct answer: Lower resource expenditure through linkage with existing databases
Passive follow-up uses database linkages (NDI, vital statistics) to determine vital status without direct patient contact, reducing staff workload and cost.
CTR Follow-Up & Data Management 2
A cancer registry receives a returned mail piece for a patient last seen 3 years ago.
What is the FIRST recommended step to locate the patient?