Measuring trends in performance across time: providing information to cancer patients.

Providing relevant, up-to-date information is identified as a quality standard of cancer care. Cancer programs need to be able to evaluate whether they are meeting the standard and to monitor their performance on an ongoing basis. Routine collection of clearly defined data, using reliable and valid measures, provides cancer program leaders with dependable information upon which to make decisions and monitor trends in performance over time. This article describes one cancer centre's experience in using standardized data collection regarding provision of patient information. The Cancer Patient Information Importance-Satisfaction Scale has been administered routinely in an outpatient setting over eight years. The profile we create from the data assists us in making informed decisions about patient education initiatives.