Cancer Stats Deliberately Altered

Someone’s been messing around with the cancer statistics in Maryland. Apparently a private vendor, which had contracted to collect the statistics, was responsible.

Here are specifics from the FHA report itself.

..MCR data (for 2001 and 2002) had been deliberately altered between August
2004 and December 2004. Specifically, over 13 percent of all cases in diagnosis
year 2002 showed some sign of alteration, especially cervical, prostate, and melanoma cancer cases. The investigation disclosed that the changes were made
after the cases were initially entered into the MCR by the laboratory facility or provider (such as, changes to the codes from non-invasive cancer to invasive cancer and changes to the year that the diagnosis was made)…

The vendor concluded that these changes were methodical and were made by one or more persons with broad access to the system, and not a result of a random set of events.

As a result of the aforementioned changes, recipients of the MCR data (such as, federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NAACCR, other states, and researchers) were obtaining and using incorrect data.

It’s unclear as to what the motivation was for over-reporting of cancer statistics.

Given all the politics around cervical cancer vacination at this point in time, this information is sure to cause concern, although I’m not sure to what use, if any, the 2002 data may have been put in this regard. Studies I’ve seen that examined the cost effectiveness of HPV screening and vaccination used much earlier cancer incidence data.