This procedure covers sources of variation at infrastructural and personnel level. The radiotherapy department concerned must complete the EORTC RTQA Facility Questionnaire (FQ) giving details of their equipment, procedures and personnel available. The FQ requests equipment and staffing information of the radiotherapy facility with updates required when new equipment is installed and/or there are major changes in staffing.
A RTQA expert will evaluate each FQ to see if it meets the minimum criteria for acceptance which is based on periodical EORTC site characteristic surveys. The last of such surveys was published by Willmann et al, 2020.
| Human resources: workload | |
| Minimum number of full-time radiation oncologists per department | 2.5 |
| Preferred mean number of patients treated per year/full time radiation oncologist | 180-250 (maximum 300) |
| Minimum number of full time qualified radiation physicists per department | 1.3 |
| Mean workload per radiation physicist | 500 patients/year (maximum) |
| Minimum number of radiation technologists per treatment unit | 2 |
| Equipment: workload | |
| Patients per year/per megavoltage unit (based on normal working hours) | 700 |
| Patients per year/per simulator (based on normal working hours) | 1500 |
Note: An EORTC Radiation Oncology Department must have at least 1 simulator (classical and/or virtual CT-simulator), a 3D treatment planning system, access to CT scanning, other imaging equipment and 2 megavoltage treatment units preferably less than 10 years old (maximum 15 years). The units must be equipped with portal imaging.
The Facility Questionnaire can be found here. Please read the following recommendations before beginning the submission of the facility questionnaire. A PDF version of the questionnaire can be printed to facilitate collection of the necessary information for submission on-line. Please find here a list of currently validated sites.
Please try to fill in the Facility Questionnaire as completely as possible. The program highlights the mandatory fields when they are not (correctly) filled in. Please make sure to mention your institution number and the reason for the submission of the Facility Questionnaire. If you are applying for a new institutional membership, you should fill in "0" (zero) for this field. Do not push the "back" button in the submission process to correct any incomplete/missing/wrong data as you will have to fill in the whole page again, and not only the incomplete/missing/wrong field. It is advised to proceed and to complete the rest of the Facility Questionnaire. When the submission is then finished, you will receive a link where you can consult and correct/update your Facility Questionnaire. Please keep this email with you in order to be able to correct/update your Facility Questionnaire.
Results of the annual dosimetry checks should be uploaded at the appropriate place in the questionnaire. It is also possible to upload your beam calibration audits at the end of the submission process.
To ease the submission process of the facility questionnaire, you can download the questionnaire as a pdf-document. With the help of this printed document, you will be able to complete the questionnaire on paper and to submit then the full questionnaire at once electronically.