What is the VLCR?
The Victorian Lung Cancer (VLCR) is a clinical quality registry that monitors the quality of care provided to Australians diagnosed with lung cancer.
The VLCR was established in 2012, and is managed by the Cancer Research Program, within the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. The School has extensive experience in both the establishment and management of clinical registries, and is considered a centre of excellence in clinical registry science.
The VLCR aims to identify unwarranted variation in treatment and outcomes for people with newly diagnosed lung cancer and provide timely risk-adjusted benchmarked reports of quality of care to participating hospitals.
The Registry is overseen by a Steering Committee which includes: consumer representatives; representatives from Cancer Council Victoria; Monash University; and clinicians from a number of participating hospitals.
Data collection
The VLCR collects information about the diagnosis, treatment and outcomes of individuals with lung cancer. This information is collected by electronically via data linkage with participating hospitals and manually by trained data collectors from hospital medical records and private clinician rooms.
The information collected will be used to measure the quality of care provided by participating hospitals. Reports are provided to participating hospitals to show the quality of care they deliver, with outcomes compared with those of other participating hospitals. The reports highlight areas where a hospital is providing high quality of care and where improvements can be made.
Participant information will be used by the registry team to generate reports for hospitals, publications, presentations and future research projects that require Registry data. The information will be reported in such as way that you cannot be identified.
Funding
Funding for the VLCR comes from government, public and private sources.
Meet the Team
The VLCR is governed by a Steering Committee, a committee of medical oncologists, respiratory and cardio-thoracic specialists, registry experts, participant/consumer advocates, partnership representatives and representatives from the Department of Health and Human Services. The Committee has developed quality indicators for the VLCR drawing from extensive clinical experience and current national and international guidelines as well as relevant published literature.
Professor John Zalcberg OAM
VLCR Academic Lead
Head, Cancer Research Program
DEPM, SPHPM, Monash University
Associate Professor Robert Stirling
VLCR Clinical Lead & Steering Committee Chair
Senior Respiratory Specialist, Alfred Health
Dr. Susan Harden
Senior Research Fellow
Senior Research Fellow
School of Public Health & Preventative Medicine, Monash University
The operational team includes Dani Samankula (BSc, MNSc, MPH) who is the VLCR research officer and site data collectors who are trained and managed by Dani to collect the data consistently across participating sites.