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Shirley Stagner, MSN, ONP, AOCNP has been appointed to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) Technical Expert Panel (TEP) for Prospective Payment System (PPS)-Exempt Cancer Hospitals Quality Measures Development. Stagner is the Director of the Cancer Survivorship Program at Lawrence Hospital Center. She has joined 11 others from around the country to develop a new set of quality measures for eleven top cancer hospitals in the U.S. The team has already developed its first set of measures which have been submitted to CMS for review. They will also be posted for public comment on its website. The goal is to have the measures finalized and disseminated to the cancer hospitals by October 2012. According to Stagner, the CMS wants to establish a certain threshold for cancer hospitals to meet to assure the highest quality as well as advance cancer care. This is only the first step for Stagner’s team. They are expected to identify additional measures and continue their work for next three to five years. This is an important body of work that will have repercussions on cancer care at hospitals around the nation - including Lawrence Hospital Center.