Systematic Review of Hospital Based Cancer Registries (HBCRs): Necessary Tool to Improve Quality of Care in Cancer Patients

INTRODUCTION: Incidence and mortality rate of cancer is increasing in all countries including low and middle-income countries. Hospital based cancer registry (HBCR) is an important tool for administration purpose and improvement of the quality of care. It is also important resource for population based cancer registries. In this study we reviewed HBCRs in different countries. METHODS: We searched the published literature using the MEDLINE (PubMed), Google scholar, Scopus, ProQuest and Google. We also reviewed websites of the HBCRs in different countries. The search was carried out based on proper keywords in English for all motor engines including “hospital-based”, “clinical” and “data quality” combined with “registry”, “cancer” and “tumor” including all subheadings. We reviewed objectives, developer institutions, minimum datasets, data sources, quality control indicators and processes. RESULTS: In total we found 163 papers in the first step. After screening of the titles, abstracts and the full texts, 14 papers remained for analysis. Analysis of the 14 papers showed that the improvement of the quality of the care were the most important objectives among the registries. HBCRs collect information about patients, tumor diagnosis, treatment and follow-up. Generally, indicators such as completeness and validity were used for quality control. CONCLUSION: Because of the increases in cancer burden in the world, more attention is needed to be paid on cancer surveillance systems, including HBCRs. We evaluated and highlighted the importance and characteristics HBCRs and believe that this paper would help the hospitals and policy makers for planning and establishment of new HBCRs. We suggest the establishment of a worldwide network for coordination and collaboration between HBCRs.