Objectives: To determine whether the interval over which patients are asked to remember their falls affects fall reporting. Design: Systematic literature review. Setting: Community. Participants: Individuals being monitored for falls in prospective studies that asked participants to recall falls over varying intervals. Measurements: Sensitivity and specificity of retrospective recall compared with a criterion‐standard prospective assessment using some form of ongoing fall monitoring. Results: Six studies met the inclusion criteria. Recall of falls in the previous year was specific (specificity 91–95%) but less sensitive (sensitivity 80–89%) than the criterion standard of ongoing prospective collection of fall data using fall calendars or postcards. Patients with injurious falls were more likely to recall their falls. Lower Mini‐Mental State Examination score was associated with poorer recall of falls in the one study addressing this issue. Conclusion: Whenever accurate data on all falls are critical, such as with interventions to decrease the rate of falls, researchers should gather information on falls every week or every month from study participants. The optimal method of fall monitoring—postcard, calendar, diary, telephone, or some combination of these—remains unknown.

The quality of care, measured according to whether patients were offered recommended services, increases as a patient's number of chronic conditions increases.

Failures to prescribe indicated medications, monitor medications appropriately, document necessary information, educate patients, and maintain continuity are more common prescribing problems than use of inappropriate drugs in older patients.

A practice-based intervention integrated into usual clinical care can improve primary care for falls and urinary incontinence, although even with the intervention, less than half of the recommended care for these conditions was provided. More-intensive interventions, such as embedding intervention components into an electronic medical record, will be needed to adequately improve care for falls and incontinence.

Among older persons at increased risk of death or functional decline, multimorbidity results in better, rather than worse, quality of care.

Better performance on process quality measures is strongly associated with better survival among community-dwelling vulnerable older adults.

Monitoring the current status of cancer care is essential for effective cancer control and high-quality cancer care. To address the information needs of patients and physicians in Japan, hospital-based cancer registries are operated in 397 hospitals designated as cancer care hospitals by the national government. These hospitals collect information on all cancer cases encountered in each hospital according to precisely defined coding rules. The Center for Cancer Control and Information Services at the National Cancer Center supports the management of the hospital-based cancer registry by providing training for tumor registrars and by developing and maintaining the standard software and continuing communication, which includes mailing lists, a customizable web site and site visits. Data from the cancer care hospitals are submitted annually to the Center, compiled, and distributed as the National Cancer Statistics Report. The report reveals the national profiles of patient characteristics, route to discovery, stage distribution, and first-course treatments of the five major cancers in Japan. A system designed to follow up on patient survival will soon be established. Findings from the analyses will reveal characteristics of designated cancer care hospitals nationwide and will show how characteristics of patients with cancer in Japan differ from those of patients with cancer in other countries. The database will provide an infrastructure for future clinical and health services research and will support quality measurement and improvement of cancer care. Researchers and policy-makers in Japan are encouraged to take advantage of this powerful tool to enhance cancer control and their clinical practice.

The distribution and incidence of melanoma vary among different races and ethnic groups. This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of cutaneous melanoma, mucosal melanoma, uveal melanoma, and melanoma of unknown primary (MUP) origin in a Japanese population. We studied these four types of melanoma in patients registered in Hospital Based Cancer Registries in Japan from 2011 to 2013. A total of 5566 patients with melanoma were identified. The distribution of sex, age, primary site, and clinical stage was analyzed. The number of patients, proportion in comparison with all melanoma cases, and crude incidence rate per 100 000 person-year of each melanoma type were 4481, 80.5%, and 1.24 in invasive cutaneous; 821, 14.8%, and 0.32 in mucosal; 163, 2.9%, and 0.064 in uveal; and 101, 1.8%, and 0.039 in MUP origin, respectively. Including the patients with in-situ cutaneous melanoma and stage unknown cutaneous melanoma, the crude incidence rate of cutaneous melanoma increased at 1.75. Almost half of the cutaneous melanomas were located in the lower limb. Cutaneous melanoma was the most common, but less frequent than that in western countries. Mucosal melanoma was quite rare, but its proportion and crude incidence rate were higher than those in western countries. Uveal melanoma was particularly rare, and its crude incidence rate was lower than that in western countries. MUP origin was also particularly rare, but it had almost the same incidence rate as that in other countries. Melanoma in Japan was heterogeneous among the four melanoma types and shares some attributes with that in western countries.