Wyoming Cancer Surveillance System: A Succesful Interstate Data Exchange Project

A closer look at Wyoming Cancer Surveillance Program’s 2021 NPCR Success Story and its partnership with the neighboring Utah Cancer Registry.

Spotlight on Registries is a relatively new feature for the NAACCR Narrative and presents a series of articles that highlight a registry’s special activities or achievements. This edition spotlights the Wyoming Cancer Surveillance Program’s (WCSP’s) 2021 NPCR Success Story.

Because many Wyoming patients cross into Utah for diagnosis and treatment, many of these ePath reports represented cancer cases that were not reported by any other healthcare provider. These new cases contributed toward increasing WCSP’s overall case completeness. WCSP encourages other state cancer registries experiencing a significant number of residents crossing state lines for diagnosis and treatment to pursue similar partnerships with registries in neighboring states.

Registry: Wyoming Cancer Surveillance Program 
Success Story: Partnership with the neighboring Utah Cancer Registry (UCR) involving the transmission of electronic pathology laboratory (ePath) reports from Utah to Wyoming.

This project was the result of UCR’s decision to start sharing ePath reports in addition to regular NAACCR XML files as part of their regular interstate data exchange. For DxYear 2018, nearly 82% of the cases UCR sent went to the three neighboring states of Idaho (39%), Wyoming (22%), and Nevada (20%). You can read more about this project at Journal of Registry Management, 2021, vol. 48, no. 2, p. 59-63.

Julia Espinoza from Wyoming Cancer Surveillance System and author of the Success Story spoke with the NAACCR Narrative recently about their experience. Some responses were edited for clarity.

Narrative: What do you think was your greatest challenge in implementing this new procedure of receiving ePath reports of WY residents from UT?

Ms. Espinoza: I don’t feel that there were any real challenges on the part of the Wyoming Cancer Surveillance Program (WCSP) in implementing this process, as the WCSP had the infrastructure to process the HL7 ePath reports received from the Utah Cancer Registry (UCR). The biggest challenge prior to receiving HL7 ePath reports from UCR was that many Wyoming residents travel outside of the state to receive care for their cancer diagnosis, and the WCSP has no way of tracking these residents outside of the state. Many of the cases found through ePath are not found during routine interstate data exchange. With UCR being proactive and alerting the WCSP (with the ePath reports), the WCSP is now able to have much more complete data.

Narrative: What do you think was your greatest success in this implementation?

Ms. Espinoza: The greatest success of this implementation was the ability to obtain data that the WCSP didn’t even know existed. The extra data from the ePath reports not only creates a more robust database for the WCSP, but a more comprehensive look of what is really happening with cancer in Wyoming.

Narrative: Do you have anything else you would like to share with the NAACCR community as part of this article on your Success Story experience?

Ms. Espinoza: I would like to say, thank you to the UCR staff on behalf of the WCSP. The UCR’s innovative thinking and sharing of ePath reports with the WCSP has helped WCSP to continue to be a successful registry.