Become a member and receive career-enhancing benefits
Our top priority is providing value to members. Your Member Services team is here to ensure you maximize your ACS member benefits, participate in College activities, and engage with your ACS colleagues. It's all here.
Become a member and receive career-enhancing benefits
Our top priority is providing value to members. Your Member Services team is here to ensure you maximize your ACS member benefits, participate in College activities, and engage with your ACS colleagues. It's all here.
The Commission on Cancer (CoC) Cancer Liaison Physician (CLP) is an integral and required member of a CoC-accredited cancer program’s cancer committee.
The CLP:
Is selected and appointed by the cancer committee.
Can be a physician of any specialty who is an active member of the medical staff.
Fulfills the role of physician quality leader of the cancer committee.
Serves as the alternate for the cancer committee chair and oversees cancer committee meetings if the chair is not in attendance.
When choosing a CLP, the selection of women, minorities, and those of diverse backgrounds are encouraged.
It is permissible for the CLP to also serve as the cancer committee chair, but it is encouraged that the CLP role and the chair role be filled by two individuals.
Responsibilities
According to the CoC Optimal Resources for Cancer Care (2020 Standards), the CLP is identified as the physician quality leader of the cancer committee and is expected to fulfill the responsibilities within each of the following Standards:
2.2 Cancer Liaison Physician
The cancer program fulfills all the compliance criteria:
The CLP or the CLP’s alternate identifies, analyzes, and presents NCDB data specific to the cancer program, with a preference for areas of concern and/or where benchmarks are not met, to the cancer committee at a minimum of two meetings each calendar year.
The CLP is present during the CoC site visit and meets with the site visit reviewer to discuss CLP activities and responsibilities.
7.1 Accountability and Quality Improvement Measures
The CLP is expected to:
Be familiar with CoC Standard which requires the cancer committee to monitor the program’s expected Estimated Performance Rates (EPRs) for accountability and quality improvement measures selected by the CoC.
Regularly review the cancer program’s performance against the selected measures in the Rapid Cancer Reporting System and reference in your presentation to the cancer committee (Standard 2.2) and discuss recommendations for improvement where measures fall below expected EPRs.
7.3 Quality Improvement Initiative
Under the guidance of the Cancer Liaison Physician (CLP), the Quality Improvement Coordinator, and the cancer committee, the cancer program must measure, evaluate, and improve its performance through at least one cancer-specific quality improvement initiative each year:
One quality improvement initiative based on an identified quality-related problem is initiated each year. The QI initiative documentation includes how it measured, evaluated, and improved performance through implementation of a recognized, standardized performance improvement tool.
Status updates are provided to the cancer committee two times. Reports are documented in the cancer committee minutes.
The NCDB maintains several web-based data applications referred to as Quality Cancer Tools that have been developed to promote access to NCDB data. These tools are for use by Commission on Cancer (CoC)-accredited programs as a means by which to evaluate and compare the cancer care delivered to patients diagnosed and/or treated at their facility with that provided at the state, regional, and national levels.
Quality Cancer Tools are available in the CoC Quality Portal (QPort). This is a password-protected portal that CLPs are not granted access to automatically. The Primary Contact at accredited sites must request access to QPort on behalf of a CLP. This request is made in the Site Contacts section of QPort. The Primary Contact must submit a separate request on behalf of a CLP to access the Quality Cancer Tools. This request is submitted through the Data Platform Contacts section of QPort.
Once access to QPort is granted, the same login used for the retired CoC Datalinks system will be used to access QPort. In the event you forget your password, please visit the Member Login page to use the Forgot User Name or Password feature to reset your password.
The following are general communications from CoC State Chairs and are not inclusive of every communication you might receive from your CoC State Chair.
