Tumor Board
Summary:
Tumor Board encounters are defined using the OMOP visit_occurrence table, where the source value for the visit contains the phrase ‘tumor board’. Specifically, Thoracic Tumor Board patients are identified based on their primary site descriptions in the Neural Frame diagnoses data, which include diagnoses of lung, bronchus, or thymus cancers in addition to having a Tumor Board encounter.
Note: Thoracic Tumor Board definition will be narrowed further due to observations from cross-comparison between encounter data in Epic Hyperspace versus Epic Clarity.
As of August 2026, From 15,307 patients with thoracic cancer, 3,116 also had a Tumor Board encounter.
Tumor Board Encounter
Please note that starting in 2018, Stanford Cancer Center standardized and rationalized the tagging of tumor boards in the EHR.
Update: Added TB Emails patient source to Tumor Board encounters plot
This release adds a new data source to the “Tumor Board Encounters Over Time” plot: patients identified from internal Thoracic Tumor Board communications and dark-mining analysis of oncologist emails. This method surfaces Tumor Board patients not captured by the current structured-data definition. Note that the number of encounters can be viewed by hovering on the datapoint for the other series, but this information is not available for the tb_emails series.
Data Sources Across Tumor Board
| Data Sources Across Tumor Board | ||
|---|---|---|
| Data Sources | Count (N) | Percentage (%) |
| Tumor Board Patients | 28,404 | 100 |
| Tumor Board Patients with Registry Data | 24,774 | 87 |
| Tumor Board Patients with Imaging and Registry Data | 24,484 | 86 |
| Tumor Board Patients with Imaging and Genomic Data | 4,129 | 14 |
| Tumor Board Patients with Thoracic Cancer | 3,116 | 11 |
Summary of Patient Population
The demographic categories examined include Age, Sex, Race, and Ethnicity.
| Thoracic Tumor Board | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Characteristic | Count (N) | Percentage (%) | |
| Total | Total number of pts | 3,116 | 100 |
| Age | 0-17 | 2 | 0 |
| Age | 18-44 | 111 | 4 |
| Age | 45-64 | 705 | 23 |
| Age | 65+ | 2,298 | 74 |
| Sex | Male | 1,446 | 46 |
| Sex | Female | 1,669 | 54 |
| Sex | Unknown | 1 | 0 |
| Race | American Indian-Alaska Native | 5 | 0 |
| Race | Asian | 971 | 31 |
| Race | Native Hawaii | 30 | 1 |
| Race | Black | 84 | 3 |
| Race | White | 1,633 | 52 |
| Race | Other-Unknown | 393 | 13 |
| Ethnicity | Hispanic Latino | 243 | 8 |
| Ethnicity | NOT Hispanic Latino | 2,794 | 90 |
| Ethnicity | Other-Missing | 79 | 3 |
Neural Frame Case Status
The Stanford Cancer Registry keeps track of every cancer case at Stanford and uses the case status variable to monitor each case’s progress. The major categories are: Completed, Not Reportable, and Incomplete.
Not Reportable cases refer to cases that are not reportable to the state per cancer registry rules, or those that have already been abstracted.
Incomplete cases are reportable and have been abstracted, but are marked as incomplete due to pending treatment information or unresolved edit errors. These edits can arise for a variety of reasons, such as version changes by the state registry or code updates by standard-setting agencies.
Completed cases are reportable, have been fully abstracted, and have passed all edit checks. These cases are transmitted to the state.
Please note that the Incomplete case status is eventually updated to either Completed or Not Reportable.
The distribution of case status for Thoracic Tumor Board encounter patients are listed below:
| Case Status | Number of Patients |
|---|---|
| Complete | 2,590 |
| Not Reportable | 345 |
| Incomplete | 181 |
Image Occurrence
As of August 2026, 3,098 had image occurrence procedures.
Note: The following analysis is presented for series occurrences above 500.
The following modality source values without image pixel were excluded from the analysis:
SR: Structured Report, REG: Registration, KO: Key Object Selection, PR: Presentation State
Source Codes:
The source codes for this page can be found here, and the sql queries that support the metrics can be found here.