Improvement of Care in Patients With Colorectal Cancer: Influence of the Introduction of Standardized Structured Reporting for Pathology

PURPOSE The use of standardized structured reporting (SSR) can improve communication between cancer specialists, which might improve clinical care; however, there are no reliable data on whether the introduction of SSR is associated with improvements in clinical outcome. PATIENTS AND METHODS We performed a retrospective cohort study in the Netherlands, including all patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) from 2009 to 2014. As a reference, cohorts of 2007 and 2008 were included. Data from the Netherlands Cancer Registry were used and combined with data from the Dutch Pathology Registry (PALGA) and the Dutch ColoRectal Audit. We tested the preformulated hypothesis that use of SSR improves the care of patients with CRC by improving the completeness of the pathology reports, the quality of the pathology evaluation, and patient outcomes with respect to treatment and survival. RESULTS We included 72,859 patients with CRC (23.8% reference, 32.9% SSR, and 43.3% narrative reports). Use of SSR increased over time, which resulted in more complete pathology reports (95.8% v 89.8%; P < .001). Risk assessment in stage II colon cancer was more adequate and resulted in an increased delivery of adjuvant therapy in patients with SSR (19.6% v 15.1%; P = .001). Risk of death for patients in the SSR group was significantly lowered (corrected hazard ratio, 0.94; 95% CI 0.90 to 0.97). CONCLUSION We demonstrate that use of SSR improved patient care in those with CRC by providing more complete reports of higher quality, which had significant effects on the delivery of adjuvant therapy and patient outcomes.