About the Texas Cancer Registry
Vision: A cancer-free Texas.
Mission: To collect, maintain, and disseminate high quality cancer data that contribute towards cancer prevention and control, research, improving diagnoses, treatment, survival, and quality of life for all cancer patients.
Philosophy: TCR strives to:
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Maintain a high quality nationally certified statewide population-based cancer registry with complete, timely, and accurate data.
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Meet the data needs of Texans, including public health officials, healthcare practitioners, cancer researchers, health planners, advocacy groups, the public, and other local, state, and national entities.
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Make a significant contribution to the fight against cancer.
Background: The Texas Cancer Registry is a combination active and passive surveillance system responsible for the collection, maintenance, and dissemination of high-quality, population-based cancer data. TCR consists of a central office and two regional offices. TCR received over 240,900 reports of cancer in 2019 from over 550 hospitals, cancer treatment centers, ambulatory surgical centers, and pathology laboratories located across the state. Of these reports, over 11,621 were for out-of-state residents, largely due to the internationally recognized cancer care available in Texas. These reports are distributed to other state cancer registries and make a significant contribution to the overall national cancer surveillance system.
TCR collects information such as the types of cancers that occur and their locations within the body, the extent of cancer at the time of diagnosis (disease stage), the first course treatments that patients receive, length of survival, and patient characteristics. These data are reported from various sources including hospitals, cancer treatment centers, ambulatory surgical centers, pathology laboratories, and physician's offices, as well as supplemented through various data sharing efforts with other government data collection systems, such as vital statistics.
The TCR first met Centers for Disease Control and Prevention high quality data standards in 2004 and North American Association of Central Cancer Registries Gold Certification in 2006. Although these national data standards continue to be met, the long-term vision of TCR is to collect and provide data that are equivalent in timeliness, completeness, and quality as those of the National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program registries. TCR joined the SEER Program in May 2021.