User Guide — Cancer Cases
The Cancer Cases feature helps you manage patients' cancer care and cancer data. All encounters related to reportable diagnoses are automatically sent to state cancer registries.
User access and permissions
Your practice must have the Cancer Case feature enabled, and your state cancer registry must able to receive data electronically.
Cancer Case Overview
When you enter a reportable cancer diagnosis, athenaOne automatically creates a cancer case.
The Cancer Case tab has data fields specific to cancer care and provides a view of the following:
- The patient's cancer care
- All encounters and related diagnoses, procedures, and orders that are associated with the cancer diagnosis
Going forward, athenaOne automatically ties all encounters with the same cancer diagnosis the cancer case.
A Manage link appears in the lower-right corner of the Cancer Cases tab. Click this link to manually tie encounters to the cancer case as needed.
athenaOne transmits all updates to the cancer case to the corresponding state cancer registry if the registry accepts electronic cancer data.
To export a cancer case
You can export cancer cases just as you do any other section of a patient's chart. This means you can export the information to a paper print-out or encrypted .pdf, which you can then fax or handle manually. See also: Chart Export.
To merge a cancer case
If you have refined a patient's cancer diagnosis from a general diagnosis to a more specific diagnosis, you can merge the cancer cases together. For example, you might want to merge the following two cases:
- Malignant neoplasm of ovary and other uterine adnexa; ovary
- Malignant neoplasm of ovary and other uterine adnexa; fallopian tube
Use Caution: After you merge two cases, you cannot undo the merge.
- Access the patient's chart, and locate the Cancer Cases tab.
- Select the tab for either of the cases that you want to merge.
- Click the Merge Case link.
- If more than two cancer cases exist for the patient, select the second case to be merged. Otherwise, the second case is selected by default.
- Select the diagnosis to use for the merged case. Going forward, athenaOne automatically ties all encounters with this diagnosis to the case.
- Click Manage Cases.
Field Reference for Cancer Case: Diagnosis Section
| Diagnosis | This field is populated with the diagnosis you entered in the Assessment & Plan section. |
| Diagnosis date | Enter the date for the diagnosis. |
| Histologic Type |
Name and/or code of a type of cancer, usually based on a microscopic examination of tissue/fluids. (ICD-9). (Ex. 8140/3 Adenocarcinoma, NOS) |
| Behavior |
Code for whether tissue samples are benign (0), borderline (1), in situ (2), or malignant (3). (Ex. 3, Malignant, Primary) |
| Diagnostic Confirmation |
Code for the best method used to confirm the presence of the cancer being reported. (Ex. 1, Positive Histology) |
|
Primary Site |
Body site value set. (SNOMED). [181422007, Entire Prostate (body structure)]. |
| Laterality | |
| Cancer Case: TNM Clinical Stage Section | Cancer Case: TNM Clinical Stage Section. |
| TNM Clinical Stage Date |
Date staging data was entered. (Ex. mm/dd/yy) |
| Clinical T |
Detailed site-specific codes for the clinical tumor (T) as defined by AJCC and recorded by the physician. Clinical T defines the size of the tumor. (Ex. 4) |