Lead Cancer Registrar

Default Work Shift:

Day (United States of America)

Hours:

40

Salary range:

$33.73 - $51.24

Schedule:

Full Time

Shift Hours:

8 Hour employee

Department:

Cancer Registry

Job Objective:

Responsible for leading the daily operations of the cancer registry. Analyzes clinical cancer information and independently completes patient abstracts in accordance with all national requirements set by the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Commission on Cancer (CoC), National Program for Cancer Registries (NPCR), Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program, North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR), Cancer Registry of Greater California (CRGC) and the California Cancer Registry (CCR). This role is remote; for local California residents, there may be an opportunity to collaborate on-site occasionally, as needed.

Job Description:

Education:

Required: High school diploma, GED or higher level degree; College level Anatomy, Physiology, Medical Terminology courses or an Associate’s degree in Allied Health Field

Preferred: Associate’s or higher degree in Cancer Information Management, Public Health, or related Allied Health field

Licensure/Certification:

Required: Oncology Data Specialist (ODS) certification from the National Cancer Registrars Association (NCRA); formerly known as the Certified Tumor Registrar (CTR) certification

Preferred: Certifications related to health data, quality, informatics, AI, analytics and/or regulatory compliance

Experience:

Required: Five (5) years of experience actively abstracting all cancer sites in a CoC accredited hospital-based cancer registry

Preferred: Experience with oncology-related accreditations (CoC, NAPBC, NAPRC, TJC, QOPI, ACR, NQMBC, NCI), leadership and/or auditing experience

Reports To: Manager-Cancer Information Management

Supervises: N/A

Ages of Patients: N/A

Blood Borne Pathogens: Minimal/ No Potential

Skills, Knowledge, Abilities:

Ability to manage time efficiently by prioritizing work to ensure deliverables are executed timely to meet accreditation and business needs, Ability to preserve confidentiality and security of patient data, Ability to professionally interface with other departments, medical offices, physicians and agencies, whether in person, on the phone or through electronic communication, Ability to remain organized in a fast-paced environment, Highly proficient in use and troubleshooting technology or relevant software applications for completing work, including but not limited to: Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint), Zoom, SEER Rx, CNexT, Epic, Accurint, Jabber, eFax, assigned PC or laptop, and general office equipment, Self-motivated to improve own knowledge and performance to sustain and enhance professional development, Team player that is able to work collaboratively or independently, and can effectively multi-task, Thorough knowledge of human anatomy and physiology; medical terminology; the cancer disease process, including disease progression, clinical pathways, standard treatment modalities, based on cancer site and stage; and staying on top of emerging industry changes, Working knowledge of standards and requirements of, including but not limited to: American College of Surgeons standards (ACS) Commission on Cancer (CoC), National Accreditation Programs for Breast Cancer (NAPBC) and National Accreditation Programs for Rectal Cancer (NAPRC); Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER), International Classification of Diseases for Oncology (ICD-O); American Joint Commission on Cancer (AJCC) staging; Solid Tumor Rules (STR); National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) Rapid Cancer Reporting System (RCRS); National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN); and California Cancer Registry Standards

Essential Responsibilities

1. Demonstrates compliance with Code of Conduct and compliance policies, and takes action to resolve compliance questions or concerns and report suspected violations.
2. Leads daily registry operations, provides mentorship for registrars, and conduct training on coding, registry functions, regulatory compliance, and registry software. Ensures high-quality data abstraction, staging, coding, and identifying trends and researching opportunities for staff education. 
3. Provides assistance with data utilization reports, special studies, annual report publication, and high-level data needs required for driving business decisions.
4. Performs advanced quality control audits of abstracted data to ensure accuracy and completeness. This includes assisting in being responsible for running reports and validating data in reports, providing guidance and sending corrections out to staff as necessary.
5. Monitors compliance with reporting to ensure cancer case abstracting is being performed and submitted in a timely fashion, to meet CRGC and NCDB requirements.
6. Actively participates in Cancer Committee meetings, and Cancer Conferences, providing data analytics to support clinical decision-making.
7. Assists in developing and updating standard operating procedures (SOPs) to optimize registry functions, based on current CoC standards and industry best practices.
8. Abstracting will be an essential function that is still required in this role (50%). Abstracts non-analytic and analytic cancer cases; Identifies, codes and classifies data from the electronic medical record and other available documents that includes, but is not limited to: patient identification, accession number, tumor sequence, physicians and institutions involved in the case, cancer identification, stage of disease at diagnosis, first and subsequent courses of treatment, tumor and vital status, treatment outcomes, case administration, state and organization-specific information; requests additional treatment information to assure complete case reporting, and entering returned patient information on a regular basis, as needed; considers NCCN guidelines and RCRS quality measures to ensure complete and accurate case abstraction; ensures that all eligible analytical cases are staged in accordance with the AJCC TNM, Collaborative Stage, SEER and other applicable staging system requirements and in accordance with the Cancer Registry staging policy and procedure; reviews record to locate TNM & Stage Group as recorded by the managing physician; prepares TNM for incomplete patient records and submits through Epic for physician signature and documents in patient abstract, then updates abstract upon completion, when not documented by the provider; assists with TNM Staging Audits to identify incomplete records and reassign to physicians for completion; ensures that all interactive data edits and data discrepancies are cleaned and each case is completed (as determined by the case status flag) prior to the established transmission or reporting date(s); performs abstracting tasks in accordance with applicable facility, State of California, Federal and CoC-accreditation requirements.
9. Expectations for abstracting is to maintain >90% accuracy rating on case abstracting as recommended by standard-setting agencies; participation in peer-to-peer quality assurance process, and completes any corrections necessary by the end of the month (CoC Standard 6.1); maintains a minimum productivity of 5 abstracts per assigned abstracting day; monitors suspense or assigned caseload to ensure that abstracting takes place within the reporting timeframes as specified by the facility, state, and CoC-accreditation requirements.
10. Works with all in the institution to ensure complete case finding; utilizes CAS case finding queues to review potentially reportable cases; updates SEER case finding codes annually; applies all relevant Solid Tumor Rules/Multiple Primary Rules, case reportability and ambiguous terminology rules to the case finding list by identifying any new or multiple primary cancers to be abstracted; uses all available source documents, identifies all reportable cases and enters each in to the cancer registry database system including reportable for CoC or State Only reporting, or benign cases that are reportable by agreement; ensures minimum information entered for all suspense cases includes, but is not limited to, specified fields in patient demographics, case identification, date of diagnosis, date of first contact, imaging and pathology sections of the case abstract; assigns the correct accession number, sequence, year first seen, date first seen, date of diagnosis; responds to case to case queries, phone calls and other correspondence regarding missed cases or cases still held in suspense as requested by state, CoC, and facility staff and customers.
11. Expectations for case finding is to maintain 90% or higher accuracy rate, and should maintain expected lead time ahead of abstracting target, to ensure accurate workload volumes as established by leadership.
12. Follows up annually on eligible, analytic cases to determine their cancer status, quality, and length of survival, subsequent treatment, and complete death information; updates treatment, disease status, records recurrence date and selects the most appropriate recurrence type code by utilizing abstracting rules and the STR manual general instructions in a systematic manner, utilizing the EMR and approved internet resources.
13. Expectation for follow up is to maintain 90% or higher accuracy rate, and should meet/exceed the CoC requirements to avoid program deficiency. Compliance of 80% for the most recent 15 years of data, and 90% for the most recent 5 years of data.
14. Assists with state-associated functions such as: bi-monthly state transmissions, follow back, death clearance, annual case counts, updating of abstractor listing for the facility, and any other requests from the CRGC.
15. Assists with training of new cancer registry staff in Cancer Registry procedures.
16. Supports Cancer Committee and promotes CoC Cancer Program Standards, as well as NAPBC, NAPRC, QOPI, and TJC through quality registry operations; Participates in Cancer Committee; assists in Multidisciplinary Cancer Case Conferences, as necessary, which may include documenting case discussions including treatment plans, staging or other information utilized by the Cancer Registry for accreditation purposes; monitors compliance with CAP synoptic reporting and synoptic operative reporting standards; monitors and documents patient’s clinical trial accruals; reports and updates all eligible Rapid Cancer Reporting System (RCRS) cases monthly.
17. Contributes to a positive and successful work environment and maintains an efficient workflow within the Cancer Registry.
18. Attends Cancer Committee meetings, department staff meetings, and other facility or departmental meetings as required.
19. Participates in educational training and development activities with Cancer Registry, healthcare, business and professional development venues to ensure awareness of the latest information available for Oncology and Cancer Registry specific reporting requirements and data collection standards. 
20. Ensures compliance with CoC Standard 4.3, for cancer registry staff education and credentials: attends local, regional or national employer-paid educational and training conferences as requested. Attends the annual NCRA conference in-person rotates between staff; virtual attendance is provided for all other staff not attending in-person.
21. Follows patient confidentiality guidelines and regulations (HIPAA).
22. Assists with data submission to the State of California and the National Cancer Data Base, as needed.
23. Performs other duties as assigned.