Dana-FarberBrigham and Women’s Cancer Center receives accreditation from Commission on Cancer

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The Commission on Cancer (CoC) has recognized the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center (DF/BWCC) for its dedication to providing quality care to its patients and accorded it a three year accreditation. The accreditation includes access to the CoC’s National Cancer Data Base and educational and training opportunities.

The CoC is a consortium of professional organizations committed to improving survival rates and quality of life for cancer patients. CoC accreditation is based on several rigorous criteria including state-of-the-art services; quality improvement mechanisms for evaluation and improving patient outcomes; committees that provide oversight and leadership and more.

As part of the CoC accreditation process, physician surveyors visit institutions to evaluate them and rate them on multiple standards. DF/BWCCC was given three commendations as part of its preliminary survey for its extremely high percentage of patients enrolled on clinical trials, its registrar education including a national education event; and its voluntary participation in the Rapid Quality Reporting system.

“The DF/BWCC is delighted to join the CoC,” said Mehra Golshan, MD, director of breast surgical services at DF/BWCC and chair of the DF/BWCC Cancer Committee. “We know that this will help improve the survival and quality of life of cancer patients through setting standards, prevention, education and research.”

The CoC is among the nationally recognized American College of Surgeons Cancer Programs and set standards to assure high quality, comprehensive care for patients. In addition, the CoC maintains The National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), a data base of more than 30 million patient records from accredited hospitals across the country. This database is used to generate reports on survival and quality of care, allowing hospital and clinicians to access evidence-based cancer care information in real time as they treat patients. The database can also serve as a rich resource for research investigations - researchers at DF/BWCCC will be able to conduct outcomes studies using de-identified information from the NCDB.

“The Commission on Cancer accredited programs includes 70 percent of all cancer patients in the U.S.,” said Lawrence N. Shulman, MD, chief of staff at Dana-Farber. “It has made hospitals very conscious of the quality of cancer care they provide -- it has been a good thing for the country.”

Shulman is also chair of the CoC’s Quality Integration Committee, which collects data from CoC-accredited hospitals and stores it in the NCDB from which quality data, and research data are generated. Using this data, the committee compiles annual reports that the institutions use to measure and improve quality. The 2014 report is due soon.


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