CTR Registry Operations & Management 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which NAACCR standard level requires the most complete set of data items for a cancer registry abstract?
- Gold Certified (Correct answer)
- Silver Certified
- Bronze Certified
- Platinum Certified
Correct answer: Gold Certified
NAACCR Gold Certification represents the highest completeness standard, requiring the greatest number of fully populated required data items.
Question 2: A registrar is calculating the follow-up rate for a CoC annual report. Which cases are EXCLUDED from the follow-up rate denominator?
- Cases with a date of last contact within the past 15 months
- Cases diagnosed and first treated at the facility (class of case 10–14)
- Non-analytic cases (class of case 00) (Correct answer)
- Cases lost to follow-up for more than five years
Correct answer: Non-analytic cases (class of case 00)
Non-analytic cases (class of case 00) are excluded from follow-up rate calculations because they were not initially diagnosed or treated at the reporting facility.
Question 3: When abstracting a case from a facility that is part of a health system, the registrar should assign class of case 20 when:
- The patient was initially diagnosed at another facility and received all treatment at the reporting facility (Correct answer)
- The patient was diagnosed and received all first-course treatment at the reporting facility
- The patient was only seen for a follow-up visit after treatment elsewhere
- The patient declined all treatment and was referred to hospice
Correct answer: The patient was initially diagnosed at another facility and received all treatment at the reporting facility
Class of case 20 applies when the initial diagnosis was made elsewhere but all or part of first-course treatment was administered at the reporting facility.
Question 4: Which of the following best describes 'consolidation' in the context of a central cancer registry?
- Merging records of the same patient from multiple reporting facilities into one registry record (Correct answer)
- Archiving older cancer cases to free database space
- Combining two separate cancer registries into one administrative unit
- Transferring cases from a hospital registry to the state registry
Correct answer: Merging records of the same patient from multiple reporting facilities into one registry record
Consolidation in central registries involves linking and merging multiple abstracts for the same patient-tumor combination submitted by different facilities.
Question 5: A state central registry receives data from a hospital that routinely under-reports cases. The best metric to identify this problem is:
- Observed-to-expected (O/E) case ratio compared to regional incidence rates (Correct answer)
- Percentage of cases with unknown stage
- Average time from diagnosis to abstraction
- Number of cases flagged for physician review
Correct answer: Observed-to-expected (O/E) case ratio compared to regional incidence rates
Comparing observed case counts to expected counts based on regional population incidence rates reveals facilities with systematic under-reporting.
Question 6: In registry management, 'timeliness' is most commonly measured by tracking the time from:
- Date of diagnosis to date of abstract completion (Correct answer)
- Date of admission to date of discharge
- Date of surgery to date of pathology report
- Date of referral to date of first treatment
Correct answer: Date of diagnosis to date of abstract completion
Registry timeliness is standardly measured as the interval from the patient's date of diagnosis to the date the abstract is completed and entered into the database.
Question 7: Which type of cancer registry collects data from an entire defined geographic population regardless of where treatment occurs?
- Population-based registry (Correct answer)
- Hospital-based registry
- Special purpose registry
- Disease registry
Correct answer: Population-based registry
Population-based registries capture all cancer cases occurring within a defined geographic area, providing incidence data representative of that population.
CTR Registry Operations & Management 3
Which NAACCR standard level requires the most complete set of data items for a cancer registry abstract?