We are excited to announce that the Commission On Cancer (CoC), a quality program of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), has granted three-year accreditation to our cancer program at Mercy Health – Lourdes Hospital.
In order to earn voluntary CoC accreditation, our Lourdes Hospital’s cancer program team met 34 CoC quality care standards. The hospital agreed to undergo evaluation every three years through a survey process and to maintain levels of excellence in the delivery of comprehensive patient-centered care.
Because it is a CoC-accredited cancer center, Lourdes Hospital takes a multidisciplinary approach to treating cancer as a complex group of diseases.
This requires consultation among surgeons, oncologists, diagnostic radiologists, pathologists as well as other cancer specialists. Overall, the multidisciplinary partnership results in improved cancer patient care.
“Quality care matters when you have cancer. So does the design of your program, the team who provides your care and the location where you receive it,” John Montville, executive director of our oncology service line at Lourdes Hospital, shares. “I credit our cancer care team in Paducah for all the hard work they have put in to earn this prestigious accreditation for our program. COC accreditation signals to our patients and their families that we offer the highest quality care.”
The CoC accreditation program provides the framework for Lourdes Hospital to continuously improve their quality of patient care through various cancer-related programs that focus on the full spectrum of cancer care, including:
- Prevention
- Early diagnosis
- Cancer staging
- Optimal treatment
- Rehabilitation and other ancillary and supportive services
- Dedication to community education and cancer health improvement
- Life-long follow-up for recurrent disease
- End-of-life care
When patients receive care at a CoC facility, like Lourdes Hospital, they also have access to information on clinical trials, new treatments, genetic counseling as well as patient-centered services. These services include psycho-social 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.
Like all CoC-accredited facilities, Lourdes Hospital maintains a cancer registry and contributes data to the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), a joint program of the CoC and 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, which is then used to explore trends in cancer care. CoC-accredited cancer centers, in turn, have access to information derived from this type of data analysis, which is used to create national, regional and state benchmark reports. These reports help CoC facilities with their quality improvement efforts.
There are currently more than 1,500 CoC-accredited cancer programs in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. And CoC-accredited facilities diagnose and/or treat more than 70 percent of all newly diagnosed patients with cancer.
When cancer patients choose to seek care locally at a CoC-accredited cancer center, they are gaining access to comprehensive, state-of-the-art cancer care close to home.
Learn more about the cancer care and oncology services we offer at Mercy Health.
