The Synoptic Surgical Reporting Tools Project is creating tools to easily apply guidelines to cancer surgery reports.
This Canadian Partnership Against Cancer initiative builds on work started in Alberta with funding from Canada Health Infoway. It focuses on improving the collection and use of surgical information through standardized electronic reports.
During cancer surgery, a great deal of complex information needs to be recorded to describe the cancer, determine the stage, record the details of the surgery and provide the information required to manage care after surgery.
By using technology to create an electronic system that embeds guidelines at the point of care, this project will allow more detailed and complete reports.
In addition, clinicians will get real-time information about how their practice compares with provincial and, eventually, national averages, thus providing an opportunity for quality improvement. Over the long term, this project will maximize understanding of treatment planning and follow-up, thus improving patient care.
Progress to date
Synoptic reporting is being piloted in five provinces – Alberta, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba – across five cancer sites: colon, rectum, breast, ovary, and head and neck cancers.
A national consensus process has brought together surgeons from across the country to create templates so that this information can be collected systematically; active collaboration with Canada Health Infoway has been initiated. By the end of 2009, synoptic reporting implementation in each of the pilot provinces will be underway.
