NQMBC FAQs

All breast centers are welcome to participate. For more information about participation eligibility, click here.

Yes, your Breast Center must hold an NCBC Facility Membership. The NQMBC is a benefit of a facility membership with the NCBC; it will enhance networking opportunities to gather ideas on performance improvement.

The management of breast diseases, including the screening, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer, requires the interaction of multiple specialists in multiple departments. These include, but are not limited to, surgery, medical oncology, radiation oncology, radiology, pathology, plastic surgery, physical therapy, behavioral medicine, and nursing. While many or most of these services exist in most health systems, the idea of a breast center is to organize these services into a coordinated, integrated multidisciplinary approach for the benefit of the patient. Breast centers may have all their services available under one roof or maybe a “center without walls,” organizing services located at different physical sites under unified leadership.

Yes, you may start at any time. Entering your data is dependent upon your schedule, the availability of staff to secure and enter the data and when you or your administration wants to compare themselves with others on a measure. Once you enter data you will have immediate comparisons.

No, each participant may complete each measure at their own pace. However, it is beneficial to complete the measures as soon as possible in order to begin benefiting from the comparison reports.

Yes. Click here to view a complete list of the measures. If you have further questions about the measures, please contact the NQMBC™ Program’s support staff via email at nqmbc@breastcare.org.

The reports generated can be printed and used with your administration or even in your marketing efforts. This is a great way to show that your center is interested in the quality of its patients by participating in the NQMBC™ Program. Comparison reports are also evidence that continuous attention is being paid to measure quality and steps are being taken to improve or maintain performance.

Each site must have its own facility membership, unique quality profile and login information. A separate data entry person and oversight person must be identified on each data validity agreement.

Yes. The NCoBC is providing the ACS with information on Breast Center types and also have members serving on their Board. The major difference between the two programs is that the NAPBC is an on-site survey addressing structural components of care while the NQMBC™ is an online program addressing processes of quality care and specific quality performance indicators.

No, each center may have only one data entry person.

Not at this time, at this time data will be manually entered.

NQMBC™ does not have benchmarks, what it uses are data entry ranges. These ranges are constantly floating as care improves. Once a center enters their ranges then they may compare their ranges with ranges of other facilities around the world, there are filters that a participant may apply to see how their Center measures against other Centers.

After more than 12 years of collecting data, we have identified benchmarks of performance that are consistent across the US.  Looking at breast center variation of performance by geographic region, size of the facility, type of breast center and other factors, we have identified benchmarks of performance that are common across all center varieties.  We have designated two levels of benchmarks.  The first level of compliance satisfies our certification award and is called “compliance achieved” level.  At this level, the site would be eligible for an award certification for that measure.  We also wish to recognize those who are stellar in their performance by designating a second level of performance called “outstanding” level.  We hope the majority of breast centers will achieve the compliance levels of care but also strive for the outstanding levels.  Our latest benchmarks revolve around pathology measures. For those of you who answer pathology measures, you will see benchmark levels of performance rather than percentile rank in your reports.