Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation: client-centred cancer staging standards

The Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation has a mission to promote excellence in the provision of quality health care and the efficient use of resources in health organizations throughout Canada. The products and services of the CCHSA include national standards, onsite surveys and field education. The present standards of this voluntary, nonprofit national organization recognize the importance of cancer staging as an activity to evaluate the extent of disease in cancer patients and require cancer stage to be recorded. The CCHSA is implementing the next generation of accreditation, the Achieving Improved Measurement (AIM) project, which will lead to improved measurement of quality of health care. These quality-improvement efforts will emphasize the process of recording and reporting the TNM stage in all appropriate new cases of cancer.