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Po‐Thur Eve General‐35: Official statistics generated using a commercial R&V system in the Canadian context
Author(s) -
Gelinas D,
Tanguay M
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.2244662
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , task (project management) , session (web analytics) , computer science , code (set theory) , government (linguistics) , statistics , mathematics , programming language , engineering , world wide web , paleontology , linguistics , philosophy , systems engineering , set (abstract data type) , biology
In Quebec every radiotherapy department has to present official statistics to the government known has technical units. All actions taken by therapists generate technical units roughly related to the amount of time needed to complete the task. Technical units are defined per category and task by the officials. A commercial record and verify system, VARiS version 7.2 from Varian Medical Systems, has successfully been configured to automatically capture the required technical units in Quebec. VARiS is normally installed preconfigured to collect charges in the United States using Medicare codes and charges through the application Activity Capture. This program interacts with other applications of the R&V system to greatly ease the process of confirming chargeable activities as they are completed. Replacing the Medicare codes with the Quebec codes in the administration module was the most demanding task. At treatment machines, a window will automatically appear when a treatment session is completed to confirm the activity to be charged. The application will suggest the same codes that were completed the last time. In the case portal images were acquired, the configured code will be suggested even though the code was not used in the prior session. Technical units generated elsewhere, for example in dosimetry, are computed using a single predefined template attached to every patient. The therapist searches the template for the proper code and manually completes it so that it is taken in to account in the patient's statistics.