Antunez AG, et al. - Through a cohort study of 1,315 American College of Surgeons Commission on cancer–accredited hospitals, the researchers identified hospitals’ readiness for accreditation and ascertained differences in the patients cared for in hospitals most and least prepared for accreditation. High volume hospitals were academic institutions, whereas low-volume hospitals were comprehensive community cancer programs with older patients and public insurance in the latter group. Also, black and Hispanic patients received more care in low-adherence hospitals. Therefore, community institutions with unfavorable survival outcomes, attending patients at a lower socioeconomic position were least likely to achieve National Accreditation Program for Rectal Cancer (NAPRC) accreditation. Therefore, for patients with socioeconomic disadvantage, the NAPRC study findings recommended enabling the access or engagement in quality improvement, for hospitals who hadn't achieved accreditation benchmarks yet, in order to possibly avoid increasing disparities in access to high-quality rectal cancer care.