Congratulations to the Missouri Cancer Registry and Research Center (MCR) for achieving Gold Certification through the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR)!

The MCR, which joined the Department of Public Health earlier this month, also achieved the 2022 NAACCR Registry of Distinction. 

To meet the Gold Standard for Registry Certification, registries must achieve the highest NAACCR standard for complete, accurate and timely data to calculate standard incidence statistics for the year reviewed. The recognition pertains to 2020; the MCR has achieved Gold Certification for the last decade as well as in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

For Gold Certification, a cancer registry’s data needs to meet the following criteria: 

• Case ascertainment has achieved 95% or higher completeness.
• A death certificate is the only source for identification of fewer than 3% of reported cancer cases.
• Fewer than 0.1% duplicate case reports are in the file.
• All data variables used to create incidence statistics by cancer type, sex, race, age and county are 100% error-free.
• Less than 2% of the case reports in the file are missing meaningful information on age, sex and county.
• Less than 3% of the cases in the file are missing meaningful information on race.
• The file is submitted to NAACCR for evaluation within 23 months of the close of the diagnosis year under review.

In addition, the MCR is certified as a 2022 U.S. Cancer Statistics Registry for Surveillance and 2022 Registry of Distinction awards. The latest U.S. Cancer Statistics data — which includes all information collected in Missouri — is available through several interactive data visualization tools.