Colorectal cancer screening indicators

About the data

Access the data and specifications

• Downloadable data tables
• Downloadable data specifications

How the colorectal screening indicators were selected

• The National Colorectal Cancer Screening Network (NCCSN), convened by the Partnership, provides strategic direction and input on the colorectal cancer screening quality indicators. Throughout 2018, a working group came together to develop a new set of system-level quality indicators to measure colorectal cancer screening program performance. This report continues the work initiated with the original indicators, with some refinements to support ongoing performance measurement. The previous report covering the period from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2018, is available here.

Indicator considerations and time frame

• Indicator reporting has been aligned with the Cancer Screening in Five Continents (CanScreen5) project of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). As such, most screening indicators are measured using a cohort method.
• The same screening cohort is followed for each of the indicators as they move through the pathway. The screening cohort is first defined using Participation rates among the screen-eligible population and includes the proportion of screen-eligible population who successfully completed one fecal test in the program within the measurement time frame. These individuals are followed as the cohort of interest for subsequent indicators except for Up-to-date colorectal cancer screening and Interval cancer rates.
• The screening cohort measurement time frame (screening period) is defined by those who had at least one successful fecal test (FT) (screening with result) between July 2018 – December 2020 (24 months plus 6-month grace period). The time frames for Interval cancer rates are different from the time frame used for other indicators:
  • Interval cancer rates after negative FT result covers the time frame of January 1, 2018 – December 31, 2019
  • Interval cancer rates after normal colonoscopy result covers the time frame of January 1, 2017 – December 31, 2018.
• This time period covers a significant portion of the COVID-19 pandemic and it had major impacts on the operations of the screening programs.
• If data is not available for a particular jurisdiction, this jurisdiction will not appear on the graphs. Figures that include “jurisdictions combined” results are only based on those jurisdictions that provided data for that indicator (or stratification) and may exclude some jurisdictions. Please note that it does not necessarily represent a national picture; please refer to the footnotes for details on which jurisdictions are represented.
• The number of jurisdictions represented in an indicator’s overall result may be different from the number of jurisdictions included for the stratified results based on data availability. For example, the results by geographic location were not always available for all jurisdictions even if they submitted the overall results for that indicator.

Acknowledgement

The Canadian Partnership Against Cancer would like to gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the following groups and individuals in the production of this report: the National Colorectal Cancer Screening Network, members of the Colorectal Cancer Screening Quality Indicators Working Group, and staff from jurisdictional cancer programs and agencies.

Should you require any further information related to the colorectal quality indicators please contact screening@partnershipagainstcancer.ca.