The Nassau Regional Cancer Program (NRCP) will include two community hospitals, Nassau Hospital and Lydia Hall Hospital, and their respective practicing clinical oncologists, serving south and central Nassau County, Long Island, New York. These two hospitals have highly developed clinical cancer programs. Nassau Hospital has placed fourteen patients on CALGB protocols in the past calendar year through its affiliation with the LIJ-HMC CALGB program. (The goals of this effort are to increase protocol accruals to CALGB protocols and to add CITSG as a second cooperative clinical trials program to 50 patients total.) These two programs do not have any competing protocols. The goals of this program are: 1. To place patients on state-of-the-art cooperative group protocols so as to optimize patient care. In order to implement this goal, an incentive program will be developed to encourage community oncologists to place patients on protocols. 2. A data management program will be developed which will precisely identify methods for collecting, monitoring and transferring data to a cooperative group operations office via the intermediary member groups (LIJ-HMC and NYU Division of Oncology). 3. Additional goals include encouraging continuing exchange of information among community physicians concerning optimal cancer programs and an attempt to encourage and coordinate the development of new and/or existing cancer screening, prevention and tumor registry programs among physicians in the hospitals concerned.
