Survival After Cancer Treatment at Top-Ranked US Cancer Hospitals vs Affiliates of Top-Ranked Cancer Hospitals.

Importance: Hospital networks formed around top-ranked cancer hospitals represent an opportunity to optimize complex cancer care in the community.

Objective: To compare the short- and long-term survival after complex cancer treatment at top-ranked cancer hospitals and the affiliates of top-ranked hospitals.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cohort study was conducted using data from the unabridged version of the National Cancer Database.

Trends in Regionalization of Care and Mortality For Patients Treated With Radical Cystectomy.

Background: Regionalization to higher volume centers has been proposed as a mechanism to improve short-term outcomes following complex surgery.

Objective: The objective of this study was to assess trends in regionalization and mortality for patients undergoing radical cystectomy (RC).

Research Design: An observational study of patients receiving RC in the United States from 2004 to 2013.

Compliance with Cancer Quality Measures Over Time and Their Association with Survival Outcomes: The Commission on Cancer's Experience with the Quality Measure Requiring at Least 12 Regional Lymph Nodes to be Removed and Analyzed with Colon Cancer Resections.

Background: Many quality measures in cancer care are process measures. The rates of compliance for these measures over time have not been well described, and the relationships between measure compliance and survival are not well understood.

Methods: The National Cancer Database, representing cancer registry data from approximately 1500 Commission on Cancer (CoC) cancer programs, was queried to determine the rates of compliance, with the CoC's colon cancer quality measure requiring 12 regional lymph nodes be removed at resection.

Incident Cases Captured in the National Cancer Database Compared with Those in U.S. Population Based Central Cancer Registries in 2012-2014.

Background: The National Cancer Database (NCDB) is a hospital-based cancer registry that includes diagnostic, staging, treatment, and outcomes data for newly diagnosed cancer patients in the United States. The NCDB data include 31 million records for patients diagnosed between 1985-2015. A Participant User File based on a subset of these data has been available to researchers at facilities accredited by the Commission on Cancer since 2010.