Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry

Registry Operations

About Registry Operations
Cancer Reporting: History and Legislation
Case Ascertainment
Quality Control
Reporting Facilities
Staff
Information for Local Cancer Registrars


About Registry Operations
Registry Operations is responsible for collecting and managing the data in the Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry (GBACR). They employ strict quality control and confidentiality procedures to assure the integrity of the cancer registry database, including providing training and consultation for staff at reporting facilities. Registry Operations also actively participates in regional and national studies of patterns of cancer treatment, including the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Patterns of Care Studies.

Cancer Reporting: History and Legislation
Population-based cancer reporting in the San Francisco Bay Area began in 1969 when Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties participated in the National Cancer Institute's Third National Cancer Survey. These counties have also been a part of the NCI's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program since it began in 1973. The San Francisco Bay Area Registry was operated within the California Department of Health Services until 1982, when it moved to the Northern California Cancer Center.

In 1987, cancer reporting became mandatory throughout the state of California, as established by Assembly Bill 136. This legislation designated cancer as a reportable disease and created the statewide California Cancer Registry (CCR), which has 10 regional registries. Statewide cancer incidence data reporting was effective as of January 1, 1988. The GBACR collects data for 2 of CCR's 10 regions: Region 8 (San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin and San Mateo counties), and Region 1 (Monterey, San Benito, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties).

Case Ascertainment
The GBACR receives information on all cancers diagnosed and treated within its 9-county area (except for basal and squamous cell skin cancer). This information includes data required by the SEER Program and the California Department of Health Services as well as other items recommended by the American College of Surgeons and those of regional interest.
 
Cancer registrars work both at NCCC and reporting facilities (e.g, hospitals) to abstract information from medical records and enter it into cancer reporting software, which electronically adds the data to the GBACR. Each year, the GBACR processes approximately 44,000 reported cancer cases, which include over 30,000 newly diagnosed cases. Currently, the registry database contains information on over 700,000 total cases.

Quality Control
As a SEER Registry, the GBACR maintains some of the highest quality control measures among cancer registries globally (SEER's Quality Control Measures). Quality control measures are employed at every phase of data collection, including casefinding, data entry and recoding, and an extensive set of edits are used to identify and correct errors.  In addition, Registry Operations has received the Gold Standard Award for Data Quality from the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR).

Reporting Facilities
The GBACR collects information on cancer cases from the following facilities: