Assessment of quality-of-care indicators for colorectal cancer surgery at a single centre in a developing country.

Background: The implementation of quality-of-care indicators aiming to improve colorectal cancer (CRC) outcomes has been previously described by Cancer Care Ontario. The aim of this study was to assess the quality-of-care indicators in CRC at a referral centre in a developing country and to determine whether improvement occurred over time.

Methods: We performed a retrospective study of our prospectively collected database of patients after CRC surgery from 2001 to 2016. We excluded patients who underwent local transanal excision, pelvic exenteration or palliative procedures. We evaluated trends over time using the Cochran-Armitage test for trend.

Results: A total of 343 patients underwent surgical resection of CRC over the study period. There was improvement of the following indicators over time: the proportion of patients detected by screening ( = 0.03), the proportion of patients with preoperative liver imaging ( = 0.001), the proportion of patients with stage II or III rectal cancer who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy ( = 0.03), the proportion of patients with pathology reports that indicated the number of lymph nodes examined and the number of positive nodes ( = 0.001), and the proportion of patients with pathology reports describing the details on margin status ( = 0.001).

Conclusion: This study showed the feasibility of applying the Cancer Care Ontario indicators for evaluating outcomes in CRC treatment at a single centre in a developing country. Although there was an improvement of some of the quality-of-care indicators over time, policies and interventions must be implemented to improve the fulfillment of all indicators.