Cancer Center Reduces Errors by 80%, Recoups Millions

A large cancer center was losing revenue to incomplete staging data and registry submissions that arrived late. The business office could see the symptoms — rework, audit findings, delayed reporting — but not the cause.

What we found

Registry abstraction was being handled between other duties. When volumes rose, abstraction was the work that slipped, and every slipped record created downstream rework.

What we changed

• A dedicated abstraction team working inside the center's own systems
• Daily quality sampling instead of quarterly audits
• Escalation paths for the records that genuinely need a clinician

The result

Errors fell by 80% within two quarters, and the center recouped millions in revenue that had previously been written off.