Amita Adventist Health Care at Home issued the following announcement on July 17.
The Commission on Cancer (CoC), a quality program of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), has granted Three-Year Accreditation with Commendation to the AMITA Health Cancer Institute.
To earn the voluntary CoC accreditation, a cancer program must meet or exceed CoC quality care standards, be evaluated every three years through a survey process, and maintain levels of excellence in the delivery of comprehensive patient-centered care. Three-Year Accreditation with Commendation is awarded only to programs that exceed standard requirements at the time of their triennial survey.
When cancer patients choose to seek care locally at a CoC-accredited cancer center such as AMITA Health Cancer Institute, they are gaining access to comprehensive, state-of-the-art cancer care close to home, according to CoC. The accreditation indicates that the AMITA Health Cancer Institute takes a multidisciplinary approach to treating cancer as a complex group of diseases that requires consultation among surgeons, medical and radiation oncologists, diagnostic radiologists, pathologists and other cancer specialists. This multidisciplinary partnership results in improved patient care, according to CoC.
“This accreditation reflects our team’s commitment to excellence and to the communities we serve,” said Karen Giammicchio, vice president of AMITA Health’s oncology service line. “It means that when cancer patients and their families come to AMITA Health, they can expect to receive high-level care from a multidisciplinary team that ranks among the best in the nation.”
The CoC Accreditation Program provides support that helps accredited programs enhance the care they provide. Supportive programs offered by CoC focus on the full spectrum of cancer care, including prevention, early diagnosis, cancer staging, optimal treatment, rehabilitation, life-long follow-up for recurrent disease, and end-of-life care.
When patients receive care at a CoC-accredited facility, they have access to information about new treatments, clinical trials, genetic counseling and patient-centered services such as psychosocial support, a patient navigation process, and a survivorship care plan that documents the care each patient receives and seeks to improve cancer survivors’ quality of life.
As a CoC-accredited program, the AMITA Health Cancer Institute maintains a cancer registry and contributes data to the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), a joint program of the CoC and the American Cancer Society. This nationwide oncology outcomes database is the largest clinical disease registry in the world. Data on all types of cancer are tracked and analyzed through the NCDB and are used to explore trends in cancer care. CoC-accredited cancer centers, in turn, have access to information derived from this research, which is used to create national, regional and state benchmark reports. These reports help CoC facilities with their quality improvement efforts.
The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 1.7 million cases of cancer will be diagnosed in 2018. There are more than 1,500 CoC-accredited cancer programs in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. CoC-accredited facilities diagnose and/or treat more than 70 percent of all newly diagnosed cancer patients. The CoC provides the public with information on the resources, services and cancer treatment experience for each CoC-accredited cancer program through the CoC Hospital Locator at https://www.facs.org/search/cancer-programs.
Established in 1922 by the American College of Surgeons, the CoC is a consortium of professional organizations dedicated to improving patient outcomes and quality of life for cancer patients through standard-setting, prevention, research, education and the monitoring of comprehensive, quality care. Its membership includes Fellows of the American College of Surgeons. For more information, visit: www.facs.org/cancer
About AMITA Health
AMITA Health (www.AMITAhealth.org) is a joint operating company formed by the Adventist Health System in Altamonte Springs, Fla., and St. Louis-based Ascension. With the addition of Presence Health, AMITA Health is now the largest health system in Illinois, comprising 19 hospitals and more than 230 sites of care. The newly combined health system has 900 providers in its medical groups, more than 26,000 associates and 7,000 physician partners, and now serves over 4.3 million residents in the greater Chicagoland area.
Original source can be found here.
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