title: Developing a national radiation oncology registry: From acorns to oaks.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The National Radiation Oncology Registry (NROR) is a collaborative initiative of the Radiation Oncology Institute and the American Society of Radiation Oncology, with input and guidance from other major stakeholders in oncology. The overarching mission of the NROR is to improve the care of cancer patients by capturing reliable information on treatment delivery and health outcomes.
  
  
  METHODS
  The NROR will collect patient-specific radiotherapy data electronically to allow for rapid comparison of the many competing treatment modalities and account for effectiveness, outcome, utilization, quality, safety, and cost. It will provide benchmark data and quality improvement tools for individual practitioners. The NROR steering committee has determined that prostate cancer provides an appropriate model to test the concept and the data capturing software in a limited number of sites. The NROR pilot project will begin with this disease-gathering treatment and outcomes data from a limited number of treatment sites across the range of practice; once feasibility is proven, it will scale up to more sites and diseases.
  
  
  RESULTS
  When the NROR is fully implemented, all radiotherapy facilities, along with their radiation oncologists, will be solicited to participate in it. With the broader participation of the radiation oncology community, NROR has the potential to serve as a resource for determining national patterns of care, gaps in treatment quality, comparative effectiveness, and hypothesis generation to identify new linkages between therapeutic processes and outcomes.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The NROR will benefit radiation oncologists and other care providers, payors, vendors, policy-makers, and, most importantly, cancer patients by capturing reliable information on population-based radiation treatment delivery.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, Florida. Electronic address: paltajr@ufl.edu.
authors.forename: Jatinder R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Palta
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Jason A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Efstathiou
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
authors.forename: Justin E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Bekelman
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, Missouri.
authors.forename: Sasa
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mutic
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
authors.forename: Carl R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Bogardus
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, John Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland.
authors.forename: Todd R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: McNutt
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
authors.forename: Peter E
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Gabriel
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
authors.forename: Colleen A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Lawton
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Anthony L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Zietman
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiation Oncology, Valley Radiotherapy Associates Medical Group, Manhattan Beach, California.
authors.forename: Christopher M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Rose