Regional Collaboration to Improve Radiographic Staging Practices Among Men With Early Stage Prostate Cancer

Purpose: We describe findings from a Urological Surgery Quality Collaborative project focused on improving the use of radiographic staging in men with newly diagnosed prostate cancer.Materials and Methods: From May 2009 through September 2010 Urological Surgery Quality Collaborative surgeons collected uniform data for men with newly diagnosed prostate cancer. During this period we implemented 3 phases of data collection. Unlike the baseline phase, the second and third rounds were preceded by collaborative quality improvement interventions, including comparative performance feedback, and review and dissemination of clinical guidelines. We evaluated the use of bone scans and computerized tomography across prostate cancer risk strata, Urological Surgery Quality Collaborative practice locations, and before and after quality improvement interventions.Results: We collected data for 858 men with prostate cancer. Based on the D'Amico classification 44%, 39% and 17% of the men had low, intermediate and high risk c...