Background
The ASCO/NCCN Quality Measures were built upon the quality measures developed for the ASCO’s National Initiative on Cancer Care Quality (NICCQ) and recommendations of the NCCN Breast Cancer, Colon Cancer, and Rectal Cancer Guidelines. Content and methodology panels were convened in a series of meetings to select a small number of measures for breast and colorectal cancers based on clinical impact, scientific acceptability, usefulness, potential for improvement, reliability and feasibility. Seven measures (three breast cancer, two rectal cancer, one colon cancer, and one colorectal cancer) were selected and specified.

Collaboration with the American College of Surgeon’s Commission on Cancer
Using separate processes and methodologies, the Commission on Cancer (CoC) of the American College of Surgeons (ACoS) developed a similar set of measures for breast and colorectal cancer and submitted them to the National Quality Forum (NQF) for endorsement as part of the NQF Cancer Project. Facilitated by the NQF, the ACoS, ASCO and NCCN agreed to synchronize their developed measures to ensure that a unified set were put forth to the public. 

The measures presented in Table 1 and Table 2 below are common to ASCO/NCCN and CoC. The measures in Table 1 were endorsed by the NQF. The measure in Table 3 was developed and specified by ASCO and NCCN.

Measure Implementation
Please note that 100% compliance for each measure is not the expected outcome, given that patients may not receive recommended care for reasons such as refusal or contraindications to treatment, which are not currently captured as exclusions in this set of measures. 

Next Steps
The measures will be updated regularly to reflect changes in their evidence base in consultation with the CoC. The measures are being tested in a variety of data sources, including ASCO’s Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI). The CoC is developing reporting templates for each of these measures using data reported by cancer registries from CoC-approved cancer programs (for more information, go to http://www.facs.org/cancer/qualitymeasures.html).