Certified Tumor Registrar (CTR) Practice Exam

What factor contributes to ensuring the quality of cancer registry data?

1. Regular training sessions

2. Automated data edits

3. Surveying patients

4. External audits

The correct answer is: Automated data edits

Ensuring the quality of cancer registry data is crucial for accurate reporting and patient care. Automated data edits play a significant role in this process. They are designed to catch errors and inconsistencies in the data entry as it's being entered into the system. By utilizing pre-defined rules and logic checks, these automated edits help to maintain high data quality by flagging anomalies, ensuring that data adheres to established coding standards and completeness before it is finalized. This automated approach enhances the reliability of the cancer registry by minimizing the risk of human error, which can occur during data entry or coding. This process not only improves the overall integrity of the data but also increases efficiency as registrars can focus more on comprehensive data collection rather than spending extensive time on error correction. Regular training sessions, surveying patients, and external audits also contribute to data quality, but they serve more as supplementary measures rather than primary mechanisms in real-time data correction and validation, leading to less immediate impact on the data quality itself compared to the role of automated data edits.