Quality Assurance Review Center - History

History

The history of QARC can be traced back to the late 1970s when Rhode Island Hospital was conducting RT QA reviews of leukemia-based protocols for the CALGB, which is one of the major NCI-sponsored cooperative groups. Due to the quality management of the CALGB's trials, other cooperative groups like the Pediatric Oncology Group (POG) and the Children's Cancer Study Group (CCG) decided to ensure the quality of their respective trials through the auspices of QARC. It was at this time that QARC began to seek funding from the NCI in order to manage the large influx of RT data. By 1980, QARC had received its first grant monies from the NCI, as it expanded to cover a wider array of protocol-based studies. Over the course of the next fifteen years of so, QARC began to implement a series of changes to the retrospective review process, especially with regard to its Physics/Dosimetry division. In 1996, QARC switched its affiliation from the Brown University School of Medicine to UMass Medical School. By late 2003, QARC moved from its former location at the Roger Williams Medical Center (RWMC) to offices in Providence's Federal Hill neighborhood. And in August 2010, QARC relocated to its current site on the George Washington Highway in Lincoln.