
Established in February 2015 with funding from the Partnership for Patient Care, PURC is a quality improvement initiative that brings urology practices together in a physician-led, data-sharing and improvement collaborative aimed at advancing the quality of diagnosis and care for men with prostate cancer. HCIF serves as the coordinating center, providing administrative, clinical, and database support for program members.
Collaborative Description:
PURC offers a unique opportunity to conduct a regional prostate cancer care improvement collaborative, providing urology practices across the region with a mechanism for performance measurement and reporting. Comparative, risk-adjusted data displayed in our portal allows participating practices to use real-time information to determine best practices and drive quality improvement. PURC currently brings together 132 practicing urologists from eight major urology practices across Pennsylvania and one New Jersey practice in a multiyear data-sharing and QI collaborative aimed at advancing the quality of care for men with prostate cancer. By the close of 2018, over 9,800 cases were entered into the PURC Registry.
Objectives:
1. To reduce variation in care delivery and utilization of services for men with newly diagnosed prostate cancer.
2. To measure, understand, and influence outcomes following treatment for clinically localized prostate cancer.
3. To improve patient-centered decision-making among men faced with treatment choices for clinically localized prostate cancer.
4. To provide a reliable, sustainable platform for prostate cancer data collection with
Value of PURC:
As evidenced by experience and early results, there are a number of benefits to urology practices and individual providers in participating in the PURC collaborative and clinical data registry:
- The registry has proven to be an invaluable practice management tool by allowing access to reports that trend and benchmark individual practice sites and practitioners to their peers in order to identify and address variations in care and outcomes. Specific care processes can be linked with higher quality and more efficient care, guiding important practice decisions and driving improvement efforts. A few early PURC collaborative improvements are as follows:
– Increased compliance with antibiotic prophylaxis for TRUS
– Decreased bone scan utilization for low-risk patients
- Practices and providers benefit from collaborative activities that promote innovation and the dissemination of best practices.
- Practices benefit from participating in a nationally-recognized program that leverages the data and experience of hundreds of clinicians.
- Practices are well positioned for future Medicare reporting requirements and pay-for-performance incentive plans.
- Robust PURC data provide participants opportunities to contribute to collaborative research and publications.
- Most importantly, participating practices will work together to advance prostate cancer care.
Leadership:
Robert G. Uzzo, MD, FACS
PURC Executive Director
Chair, Department of Surgical Oncology
Fox Chase Cancer Center – Temple University Health System
Marc Smaldone, MD, MSHP, FACS
PURC Regional Clinical Chairman
Associate Professor, Department of Surgical Oncology
Fox Chase Cancer Center – Temple University Health System
Coordinating Center:
PURC is a division of the Health Care Improvement Foundation.
Claudette Fonshell, RN, BSN
PURC Program Manager
Director, Clinical Improvement
Health Care Improvement Foundation
Bret Marlowe
Project Coordinator
Health Care Improvement Foundation
Participating Organizations and Physician Champions
Fox Chase Cancer Center: Marc Smaldone, MD, MSHP, FACS (Regional Clinical Champion)
Geisinger Health System: John Danella, MD
Einstein Health Network: Serge Ginzburg, MD, FACS
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania: Thomas Guzzo, MD, MPH
Urology Health Specialists: Thomas Lanchoney, MD, FACS
Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center: Jay Raman, MD
Temple University Hospital: Adam Reese, MD
MD Anderson at Cooper University Hospital: Jeffrey Tomaszewski, MD
Jefferson Urology Associates: Edouard Trabulsi, MD, FACS
Physician champions are representatives from each participating practice site that
Executive Collaborative Team Meetings
Three times each year, in-person meetings are scheduled for individuals from practices that are participating in the collaborative. During these meetings, physician champions, collaborative teams, clinical abstractors, and patient advocates come together to assess their progress, understand variability, share learning experiences, and assist one another in overcoming barriers and challenges. The committee provides expert input into the following:
- Continual analysis and evaluation of regional patterns of care and treatment outcomes;
- Identification of unwarranted variations in care and outcomes through working groups;
- Identification of specific care processes associated with better patient outcomes;
- Development and dissemination of improvement strategies and best practices;
- Periodic review of program activities and deliverables to ensure optimal support of participants.
Working Groups
Participating practices have the opportunity to connect to one another to discuss and compare results and innovations through networking calls. The collaborative has four active working groups. The working groups are as follows:
- Active Surveillance
Chaired by Adam Reese, MD, Temple University Hospital
- Biopsy
Chaired by Thomas Lanchoney, MD, FACS, Urology Health Specialists
- Genomic
Chaired by Jeff Tomaszewski, MD, MD Anderson at Cooper University Hospital
- Imaging
Chaired by Serge Ginzburg, MD, FACS, Einstein Health Network
- Opioid
Chaired by Daniel Lee, MD, MS, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
2017 Pennsylvania Prostate Cancer Task Force’s press release and report to the Pennsylvania General Assembly with recommendations for addressing prostate health and prostate cancer care.
PURC Tools and Resources
PURC Survey Reports
- Understanding Antibiotic Utilization and Prophylaxis Prior to Biopsy (2017)
- Understanding Active Surveillance as a Treatment Option for Men with Low-Risk Prostate Cancer (2017)
- Understanding Current Practice and Utilization of Prostate Cancer Biomarkers among PURC Providers
Additional Resources
- Pennsylvania Prostate Cancer Coalition https://paprostatecancer.org/
- Robin Cole Foundation https://robincolefoundation.org/
- American Cancer Society https://www.cancer.org/cancer/prostate-cancer.html
- Michigan Urological Surgery Improvement Collaborative (MUSIC) https://musicurology.com/
Collaborative Participants Only (Restricted)
- PURC Data Portal – login required
Published Research Articles
2018 Accepted Mid-Atlantic American Urological Association (MAAUA) Abstracts
- Factors Associated with Active Surveillance Utilization as Initial Management Strategy for Men with Newly-Diagnosed Prostate Cancer
- Practice Patterns for Use of Prostate Cancer Biomarkers in PURC
2018 Accepted American Urological Association (AUA) Abstracts
- Racial Variation in Use of Active Surveillance for the Management of Low Risk Prostate Cancer in a Regional Collaborative
- Correlation of mpMRI Findings and Prostatectomy Pathology across PURC
- Practice Patterns of Transrectal Prostate Biopsy Antibiotic Prophylaxis in almost 5,000 Patients from PURC
2017 Accepted American Urological Association (AUA) Abstracts
- Use of Duplicate Axial Imaging in Newly Diagnosed Prostate Cancer – Trends across the Pennsylvania Urologic Regional Collaborative (PURC)
- Variation in Active Surveillance Utilization for the Management of Prostate Cancer in a Regional Collaborative
2016 Accepted Mid-Atlantic American Urological Association (MAAUA) Abstracts
215-575-3747