MACO - Medical Affairs and Community Oncology

What is Cancer Surgery Alberta?

The issue of the quality of medical and surgical treatment is a critical concern for patients, health care physicians and institutes. This is particularly relevant for cancer patients, to whom the characteristics of surgeons and hospitals are significant prognostic variables in both short-term and long-term outcomes for the patient. Surgeries for cancer continue to cure more than 50% of patients and up to 65% of patients with cancer are clinically diagnosed by a surgical practitioner.

After a consultative process including the ACB, health regions, and the Alberta Medical Association, the Cancer Surgery Working Group (CSWG) was convened in 1998 in response to a stated need: specifically, the lack of well-defined and readily available guidelines in cancer surgery. The group is comprised of administrative and surgical representatives from ACB, Alberta Health and Wellness and the health regions.

• Cancer Surgery Alberta brochure (.pdf, 523 KB)

The CSWG's mandate was to provide strategies to ACB to ensure that an integrated program in cancer surgery delivers the most effective and optimal services to Albertans. The most important initiative that the CSWG has accomplished to date is the development of a web-based surgical data collection system. This system involves the use of electronically preformatted surgical medical record (WebSMR) templates to document surgical procedures, thus eliminating the need to dictate an operative report. With the roll-out of the WebSMR, it was deemed appropriate to change the name of the CSWG to Cancer Surgery Alberta (CSA), to better reflect a unified and programmatic approach to setting standards and outcomes assessment in cancer surgery.

WebSMR
Developed almost entirely by ACB and health region clinicians, the WebSMR provides health care institutions with a simple, standardized means to capture surgical medical records through a secure online questionnaire that surgeons may complete from any place at any time. It provides a vehicle to facilitate the adoption by surgeons of information system technology and will help to advance the implementation of an integrated electronic medical record in Alberta. A surgical report can be printed based on the WebSMR at any time, and it replaces the need for a surgeon to create standard reports through dictation or other measures.

The WebSMR is also an important educational tool for surgeons across the province because it provides surgeons with a data set to improve techniques or to identify areas in which continuing education and training may be required, improving overall cancer surgery patient care.

Implementation of the WebSMR across the health regions is a key initiative of ACB as part of its multi-year performance agreement with Alberta Health and Wellness.

WebSMR implementation is well underway and the program will continue to roll-out province wide into the new year with several tumour groups onboard, including hepatobiliary, rectal, breast, sarcoma, melanoma, ovarian, endocrine, colon, and periampullary.