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National Breast Cancer Audit

Surgeon Participation List  - Looking for a surgeon who is committed to improving their practice by participating in audit?

Click Here  to see a list of surgeons in Australia and New Zealand currently contributing data to the audit.

The National Breast Cancer Audit (NBCA) has been developed with the aim of improving quality of care by surgeons for patients with early breast cancer in Australia and New Zealand. Originally initiated as a pilot study in 1998, the audit has grown to be probably the largest collection of breast cancer clinical information of its kind; in 2010 comprising over 93,000 breast cancer episodes from over 450 surgeons from Australia and New Zealand. The NBCA provides surgeons with a self audit tool to monitor their own surgical practice in relation to evidence based standards as well as participating in a quality improvment cycle. We openly encourage any surgeon in Australia and New Zealand treating any cases of breast cancer to join the audit.

The NBCA is a free service that offers surgeons a secure, online interface which: stores patient data; provides an instant summary of the surgeons breast cancer cases, treatments and overall performance; allows surgeons to export all of their cases to Microsoft Excel for personal analyses; and allows surgeons access to annual performance reviews, newsletters, and publications that are generated from the data collected by the NBCA. The NBCA is a recognised activity in the College's professional development program. Participating surgeons receive a participation certificate and are listed as a participating surgeon on the websites of the College, and peak consumer group Breast Cancer Network Australia as a recommended breast surgeon. As mentioned the NBCA database is available online via a secure website, surgeons who cannot enter data via the website are still encouraged to participate by contributing data on paper forms.

The audit has been endorsed by the College of Surgeons and the Section of Breast Surgery as an appropriate means of assessing the treatment of early breast cancer. The audit has also been declared a Quality Assurance Activity under the Commonwealth Health Insurance (Quality Assurance Confidentiality) Amendment Act (1992). The purpose of this legislation is to ensure that information that becomes available as a result of the activity can not be disclosed, other than for general reporting purposes (i.e. annual reports, research papers). In August 2002 ASERNIP-S in the Research, Audit and Academic Surgery Division took over the responsibility for the management of the National Breast Cancer Audit and resides in the ASERNIP-S office in Adelaide, South Australia.. The NBCA has a strong network of support (see governance chart below) and aims to provide valuable feedback to surgeons as well as seeing the data utilised to make significant contributions to research.

Contact Us:

The National Breast Cancer Team is Katherine Economides Acting Morbidity Audits Manager; Primali de Silva, Senior Research Officer, Louise Kennedy, Data and Adminstrative Officer and Michelle Ogilvy, Research Officer.

Help Desk - for further information or help with the online system

Ph: +61 8 8363 7513
Email:   college.breast.audit@surgeons.org
Address: PO Box 553, Stepney, South Australia 5069

Ms Katherine Economides - Acting Morbidity Audits Manager

Ph: +61 8 8363 7513
Email: Katherine.economides@surgeons.org
Address: PO Box 553, Stepney, South Australia 5069