For many years, organizations, hospitals, and cancer centers concerned with the control of cancer, focussed their attention nationally and internationally on research, cancer prevention, public and professional education, and service to the patient with cancer, including rehabilitation. Efforts today have been broadened to reduce the risk of cancer by changing life styles, to detect cancer at its earliest possible and most highly curable stage, to provide prompt and adequate treatment, and to restore the patient to as nearly a normal way of life as possible after cancer therapy. Now, those interested in oncology have added a new dimension to the themes mentioned, namely the assurance and documentation of quality care for all cancer patients. One of the main resources that will be used to achieve high quality will be the data bases created for the patterns of care evaluation studies for many anatomic sites of cancer. Gerald P. Murphy, MD, Chief Medical Officer of the American Cancer Society, was one of the pioneers in organizing patterns of care evaluation studies for the American College of Surgeons more than 10 years ago. The American College of Radiology made many significant contributions in patterns of care studies, as did other organizations.
The American Cancer Society in concert with the Cancer Commission of the American College of Surgeons held a workshop on Quality Assurance in the Care of the Cancer Patient in Chicago, Illinois, in late August 1988. The program of that workshop was developed by a joint committee that selected 40 participants representing surgery, medicine, radiology, pathology, nursing, social work, and other health care professionals.