The Rapid Cancer Reporting System (RCRS) is the official, mandatory data submission and quality reporting platform for all Commission on Cancer (CoC)-accredited hospital registries, developed by the American College of Surgeons' (ACS) National Cancer Database (NCDB).
Released in September 2020, RCRS replaced the older Rapid Quality Reporting System (RQRS) and the annual NCDB Call for Data, becoming the new, single source for data submission for all CoC-accredited hospital registries.
The system mandates that cancer programs submit new and updated analytic cases on a frequent, monthly basis, which significantly reduces the lag time between patient diagnoses and their inclusion in national and hospital-level reports. RCRS provides real-time and historical performance data on a portfolio of quality measures (11 measures at launch), allowing CoC-accredited programs to evaluate and compare the cancer care delivered at their facility against national benchmarks.
Key features include the Submission Compliance Report, which helps hospitals track their progress toward meeting the required case submission threshold for accreditation (e.g., 90% of the previous three years' average case count), and tools for case deactivation and reactivation. The platform supports data submission via file upload (e.g., CSV) from hospital cancer registry software. The ultimate goal of RCRS is to streamline the data collection process, accelerate quality improvement, and ensure high-quality, coordinated patient care.