title: Surveillance of waiting times for access to treatment: a registry-based computed approach in breast cancer care.
abstract: The current study set out to automatically generate waiting times for access to surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and to analyse their determinants for non-metastatic breast cancer patients. We used data from the Poitou-Charentes regional cancer registry of women diagnosed with stages I-III breast carcinoma between 2008 and 2010. Waiting times were automatically computed from a previously validated algorithm modelling the care trajectory and then compared with national guidelines. The population of this study included 1082 patients. The compliance with guidelines ranged from 52.4% (access to adjuvant chemotherapy) to 89.2% (access to adjuvant radiotherapy). Younger age, a higher TNM stage, a lower grade, having a triple negative tumour, being the subject of multidisciplinary meetings and being a patient at a public hospital were associated with longer waiting times. The main result was the significant heterogeneity between geographical areas of treatment for all waiting times studied. The original, reproducible use of a registry-based automated algorithm to generate waiting times will help to follow these indicators routinely and efficiently.
authors.affiliation: Registre général des cancers de Poitou-Charentes, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Poitiers, Université de Poitiers, Poitiers, France.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Quillet
authors.affiliation: Registre général des cancers de Poitou-Charentes, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Poitiers, Université de Poitiers, Poitiers, France.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Defossez
authors.affiliation: Registre général des cancers de Poitou-Charentes, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Poitiers, Université de Poitiers, Poitiers, France.|INSERM, CIC 1402, Poitiers, France.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ingrand
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D020360:Neoadjuvant Therapy / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D012042:Registries; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D061665:Time-to-Treatment; D047368:Tumor Burden; D014850:Waiting Lists
keywords: automatic data processing; breast cancer; cancer registry; waiting times