Text area for manual documentation of the facility, physician office, city, state, or county where the diagnosis was made.

Text documentation is an essential component of a complete electronic report and is heavily utilized for quality control and special studies. Text is needed to justify coded values and to document supplemental information not transmitted within coded values. High-quality text documentation facilitates consolidation of information from multiple reporting sources at the central registry.

Instructions

• Prioritize entered information in the order of the fields listed below.
• NAACCR-approved abbreviations should be utilized (see Appendix G).
• Do not repeat information from other text fields.
• Additional comments can be continued in empty text fields, including Remarks. For text documentation that is continued from one text field to another, use asterisks or other symbols to indicate the connection with preceding text.
• If information is missing from the record, state that it is missing.
• Do not include irrelevant information.
• Do not include information that the registry is not authorized to collect.

Note: For software that allows unlimited text, NAACCR recommends that the software indicate to the reporter the portion of the text that will be transmitted to the central registry.

Suggestions for text:

• The complete name of the hospital or the physician office where diagnosis occurred. The initials of a hospital are not adequate.
• For out-of-state residents and facilities, include the city and the state where the medical facility is located.

Data Item(s) to be verified/validated using the text entered in this field

After manual entry of the text field, ensure that the text entered both agrees with the coded values and clearly justifies the selected codes in the following fields:

Item Numbers: 2410, 2420, 500, 540, 610, 670, 740