Abstract
Patterns of Care Study (PCS) in Radiation Oncology began in 1972 in the United States funded by National Cancer Institute. The study included several kinds of national surveys of radiotherapy practice.
At first a facility survey was conducted to allow the identification of specific radiation therapy equipment, simulator, personnel resources and so on in every department in the United States. By this survey a facility master list was developed and has been used for sample identification of national benchmark studies in process and outcome for key diseases in which radiation oncology played a prominent role.
Another important step was to determine the national consensus of best current management for these diseases. These guidelines were used o measure the national compliance of process of care.
These continuous activities of PCS not only revealed the patterns of radiotherapy care and also improved their average in the United States. PCS also played major role in developing quality assurance in radiation oncology.
In this paper the author introduced this study and made some disscussion about its contribution to quality assurance in radiation oncology in the United States. PCS is to be an exellent model of quality assurance activity in radiotherapy in Japan.
