Patients With Cancer Receiving Chemotherapy in the Last 14 Days of Life
Identifying Attributes
Care Settings
Country
Publishing Organisation
Type of Quality Indicator
IOM Quality Dimension
Domain
Defining Attributes
Definition
Patients with cancer receiving chemotherapy in the last 14 days of life. Chemotherapy is identified by Drug (ATC) selection: ATC category L01, minus some products that are (also) used in non-oncological settings (e.g. Ledertrexate, Celecoxib). More precisely, L01 covers systemic therapy with exclusion of hormonal therapy. L01 not only covers chemotherapy but also PKI and monoclonal Ab.
Numerator
Number of patients receiving chemotherapy in the last 14 days of life.
Denominator
Number of patients diagnosed with cancer that died within the studied time period.
Exclusions
Patients with more than one invasive tumour (until 2015) Patients without a Belgian residence Patients without national social security number Patients for whom no Intermutualistic Agency (IMA) data of the year of death were available (=3.9%) Patients with an uncertain date of diagnosis Age at diagnosis <18 years
Other restrictions: Maximum 3 years of follow-up was applied. Analyses are limited to patients who died before January 1st of the third year following the year of incidence. For example: patients diagnosed in 2006 were included in case they died in 2006, 2007 or 2008; patients diagnosed in 2007 were included in case they died in 2007, 2008 or 2009, etc. These cohorts were defined in order to assure that for every diagnosis, the same follow-up period could be taken into account. By applying this definition, a bias induced by varying length of the follow-up period could be avoided.
Use of Risk Adjustment
Risk Adjustments
None
Stratifications
Data Attributes
Type of Data Collection
Data Collection Methods
Belgian Cancer Registry (BCR) linked with Intermutualistic Agency (IMA) data. The Belgian Cancer Registry is an exhaustive national register of cancer cases. The IMA dataset includes all information as collected by the seven existing health insurance agencies in Belgium. This database covers data on reimbursed medication and reimbursement for the use of health services, collected in the framework of the compulsory Belgian health care and benefits insurance program.
Frequency of Data Collection
Frequency of Data Collection in Days
Reporting Methods
Public reporting.