CONTEXT: The College of American Pathologists Cancer Case Summaries templates provide a method for including all necessary pathology information in surgical pathology reports with cancer. How effective these templates are at ensuring a complete report, as measured by a separate outside tumor registry, is not known. OBJECTIVE: To determine factors that correlate with the completeness of the pathology report. DESIGN: All surgical pathology reports from our hospital (Baptist Hospital of Miami, Miami, Florida) that used templates from January 2004 through February 2013 were reviewed and assessed for completeness by an outside tumor registry. RESULTS: From 2004 through June 2012, 6139 surgical pathology reports were completed using the template, but only 5151 reports (84%) were complete. For the period January 2012 through June 2012, experienced pathologists who filled out at least 50 templates (n = 3) had a significantly higher completeness rate (187 of 206; 91%) than did pathologists who filled out less than 50 templates (n = 3; 23 of 35; 65%, P < .001) or pathologists who were new to the templates (n = 1; 81 of 104, 78%; P = .002). When the templates were changed by the elimination of all optional information, sequential numbering of all necessary items, and bolding the distance from the closest margin, completeness significantly improved to 98% (313 of 320, P < .001). The improvement remained constant for the 6 months after the changes in format. CONCLUSIONS: The introduction of simple formatting changes was associated with significantly improved completeness of pathology reports that use the College of American Pathologists Cancer Case Summaries.
CONTEXT: The College of American Pathologists Cancer Case Summaries templates provide a method for including all necessary pathology information in surgical pathology reports with cancer. How effective these templates are at ensuring a complete report, as measured by a separate outside tumor registry, is not known. OBJECTIVE: To determine factors that correlate with the completeness of the pathology report. DESIGN: All surgical pathology reports from our hospital (Baptist Hospital of Miami, Miami, Florida) that used templates from January 2004 through February 2013 were reviewed and assessed for completeness by an outside tumor registry. RESULTS: From 2004 through June 2012, 6139 surgical pathology reports were completed using the template, but only 5151 reports (84%) were complete. For the period January 2012 through June 2012, experienced pathologists who filled out at least 50 templates (n = 3) had a significantly higher completeness rate (187 of 206; 91%) than did pathologists who filled out less than 50 templates (n = 3; 23 of 35; 65%, P < .001) or pathologists who were new to the templates (n = 1; 81 of 104, 78%; P = .002). When the templates were changed by the elimination of all optional information, sequential numbering of all necessary items, and bolding the distance from the closest margin, completeness significantly improved to 98% (313 of 320, P < .001). The improvement remained constant for the 6 months after the changes in format. CONCLUSIONS: The introduction of simple formatting changes was associated with significantly improved completeness of pathology reports that use the College of American Pathologists Cancer Case Summaries.
Authors: Caro E Sluijter; Luc R C W van Lonkhuijzen; Henk-Jan van Slooten; Iris D Nagtegaal; Lucy I H Overbeek Journal: Virchows Arch Date: 2016-04-21 Impact factor: 4.064
Authors: Megan A Renshaw; Scott A Renshaw; Mercy Mena-Allauca; Patricia P Carrion; Xiaorong Mei; Arniris Narciandi; Edwin W Gould; Andrew A Renshaw Journal: J Pathol Inform Date: 2017-03-10
Authors: Carol C Cheung; Penny Barnes; Gilbert Bigras; Scott Boerner; Jagdish Butany; Fiorella Calabrese; Christian Couture; Jean Deschenes; Hala El-Zimaity; Gabor Fischer; Pierre O Fiset; John Garratt; Laurette Geldenhuys; C Blake Gilks; Marius Ilie; Diana Ionescu; Hyun J Lim; Lisa Manning; Adnan Mansoor; Robert Riddell; Catherine Ross; Sinchita Roy-Chowdhuri; Alan Spatz; Paul E Swanson; Victor A Tron; Ming-Sound Tsao; Hangjun Wang; Zhaolin Xu; Emina E Torlakovic Journal: Appl Immunohistochem Mol Morphol Date: 2019 Nov/Dec