Economic evaluations are becoming increasingly important to assess cost-effectiveness and identify approaches to increase efficiency in program operations. Standardized data collection tools are required to obtain reliable resource use and cost data from central cancer registries in order to perform economic evaluations. In this study, we describe the development of a new cost data collection instrument, the National Program of Cancer Registries' Cost Assessment Tool (NPCR-CAT), which was pilot tested with a representative group of seven registries. The registries were asked to complete the Excel-based NPCR-CAT retrospectively with information on expenditure incurred in program year 2005. The majority of the registries were able to provide detailed data required to assign costs to specific activities performed by the registries. The challenges faced in completing the NPCR-CAT include lack of continuity due to staff turnover and complicated structures of decentralized programs that requires data collection from multiple entities. The lessons learned from pilot testing the NPCR-CAT will help tailor future data collection efforts to ensure high quality data are obtained from all registries
