All the Latest FCDS News
Doing Your Part: The Importance of Reporting
SEPTEMBER 2025
With more than 2 million Americans projected to be diagnosed with cancer in 2025, the disease remains one of the nation’s leading public health concerns, with Florida expected to account for about 9% of these cases.¹
Comprehensive and timely cancer reporting to central cancer registries (CCRs), such as the Florida Cancer Data System (FCDS), plays a crucial role in addressing this public health burden. Together with dedicated cancer registrars, FCDS and other CCRs serve as a cornerstone of cancer surveillance by providing the data necessary to understand, prevent, and treat cancer effectively.²
Coding Fine Needle Aspiration
SEPTEMBER 2025
Do we have to code the FNA as histology? And why? It may contain cells but not tissue.
If FNA is histology, then we have all been coding this wrong for multiple years. If it says “suspicious for,” we should then count the ambiguous terminology for FNA as the date of diagnosis. If so, we will need to let stage registries and COC facilities all know this.
Code Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA) as 1-Histology in Dx Confirmation when reporting to FCDS
When I entered this industry, I had a hard time with it. After all, in pathology and in many publications and definitions, FNA is treated as Cytology. Then I read to code it to 1(Histology) in the Diagnostic Confirmation in the Data Acquisition Manual.
SEPTEMBER 2025
Announcing the 2025 FCDS Annual Monograph
Comorbidities are medical conditions that patients have beyond the primary problems for which they are receiving treatment.
The presence of these conditions, such as liver disease, AIDS/HIV, or hypothyroidism, may complicate treatment for a given patient and result in worse outcomes. These conditions can have profound effects on the survival rates of many types of cancer, and some specific conditions can often co-occur with specific cancers.
To allow researchers to examine trends related to comorbid conditions among Florida cancer patients, the FCDS, through its partnerships with the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) and the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), will be making its data regarding comorbid conditions of Florida cancer cases available to users. This will be made available as the NAACCR item #2220 “FCDS DRG, Principal and Secondary Diagnoses” within the Data Request Automated Management System (DREAMS). Once the data item has been incorporated into DREAMS, this dataset will be available for approved users and has the possibility to be used for many research purposes.
Other Information:
New in Announcements:
New in Reporting Requirements:
New in Quality Control:
New in Education & Training:
