Blog Post 8
One of the goals of my practicum was to interview registrars
from other catchment regions in order to get first hand accounts from the
people responsible for maintaining the Pacific registries. The first registrar interviewed was from the
Northern Marianas Islands. The interview covered the following questions:
o
Are private clinics compliant with timely
reporting of cancer cases?
o
What are the CNMI’s screening guidelines for
cervical cancer? For colorectal cancer?
o
In what ways could the registrar strengthen its
services?
o
Could it advocate for more community outreach or
encourage a different way for health professionals to approach cancer screening
and diagnosis or increase its staff?
o
Is there a problem with underreporting?
o
Does the registrar collaborate with medical
referral when keeping track of patients sent off-island or does the report come
directly from the hospital providing the service?
Key
parts of the interview will probably shed some light on the issues and
successes of each districts registry.
Another applicable issue that was brought up in my time at
the registry is the Certificate of Need (CON).
The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) use CONs to
validate the necessity of a particular program. As stated by the NCSL, “Certificate
of Need (C.O.N.) programs are aimed at restraining health care facility costs
and allowing coordinated planning of new services and construction. Laws authorizing such programs are one
mechanism by which state governments seek to reduce overall health and medical
costs.” This is a very important hurdle when trying to bring in new screening
programs in the pacific what comes to mind most is the idea to introduce a
colorectal cancer-screening program.
