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Press Releases
CMC Vascular Laboratory receives Reaccredidation
For Immediate Release
Contact: Jane Gaul
Phone: 570-969-7002
j.gaul@cmchealthsys.org
Seated: (left) Karen Roscioli, VT; Jen Dougherty, RVT and Mary Ellen Cole, RVT Standing:(left) Bob Bonczek, Administrative Director of Ancillary Services; Barbara Bossi, RN, Vice President of Patient Care Services; Edward Batzel, M.D., F.A.C.S., CMC Section Chief of Vascular Surgery, Co-Medical Director, Hyperbaric Oxygen Unit and Medical Director of the Wound Care Center and Non-Invasive Vascular Laboratory, and Jason Lewis, RVT, Technical Director of the Vascular Lab.
SCRANTON, PA, March 11, 2010 – Community Medical Center Vascular Laboratory has attained recognition for its commitment to providing a high level of patient care and quality testing for the diagnosis of vascular disease. The facility achieved reaccreditation by the Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Vascular Laboratories (ICAVL).
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, costing society over 83.7 billion dollars each year in health services, medications and lost work time due to disability. Stroke, a disorder of the blood supply to the brain, is the third leading cause of death and disability in this country, with 500,000 new strokes occurring annually.
One American dies every 32 seconds of cardiovascular disease, disorders of the heart and blood vessels. Each year, 2 million people in the United States alone develop deep vein thrombosis – blood clots in the veins. This affliction becomes life threaten for 500, 000 of those people when the blood clot breaks loose and travels to the lungs.
Early detection of these life-threatening vascular diseases is possible thought the use of noninvasive vascular testing techniques performed within vascular laboratories.
Community Medical Center, Vascular laboratory located in Scranton, PA, is one of the select numbers of vascular laboratories in the United States, Candida and Puerto Rico to meet or exceed the ICAVL standards for noninvasive vascular testing. During the accreditation process, every aspect of the laboratory’s daily operations and its impact on the quality of health care provide to patients is assessed and reviewed. While completing the applications, laboratories are required to identify and correct potential problems, revised protocols and validating quality assurance programs.
Participation in the accreditation process demonstrates the laboratory’s attention to high level of patient care and quality testing. ICAVL accreditation is valid for a period of three years.
The ICAVL is non-profit organization established with the support of eleven medical societies including physicians, technologists and sonographers that represent medical specialties including cardiology, neurology, radiology, vascular medicine, vascular surgery, neurosurgery, internal medicine and biology.
CMC Auxiliary Shows Support For Haiti
For Immediate Release
Contact: Charlotte Wright
Phone: 570-207-0112
cwright@neparc.org
Cindy Strenkoski (Development Director, American Red Cross), Maria Elisa Giordano (CFO & Sr. Director, American Red Cross), Nan O. Wandalowski (President, CMC Auxiliary), Ann Lewis, R.N. (Vice President, CMC Auxiliary)
SCRANTON, PA, March 5, 2010 – Representatives from Community Medical Center’s Auxiliary met with the American Red Cross to present them with a check to support relief work in Haiti. Staff, volunteers and visitors to the hospital Gift Shop were given the opportunity to buy a chance for one of three $50 gift certificates. The initiative, led by the CMC Auxiliary, raised $210.00 which will benefit the American Red Cross International Relief Fund.
All of the proceeds raised by the Auxiliary will be directed to the American Red Cross International Relief Fund which will provide immediate relief and long-term support through supplies, technical assistance and other support to help those in need. The Red Cross has helped nearly 1.9 million Haitians since the January 12 earthquake, and expects to support hundreds of thousands of additional survivors in the years ahead.
The American Red Cross thanks the Auxiliary, staff, volunteers and visitors for their continued support.
Community Medical Center Receives APEX Award
from VHA Inc. for Clinical Excellence
For Immediate Release
Contact: Noelle Snyder
Phone: 570-969-8985
noelle.snyder@cmchealthsys.org
Community Medical Center recently accepted the 2009 VHA Pennsylvania Achieving Patient Care Excellence Award. This award was earned by demonstrating extraordinary levels of clinical performance by meeting and exceeding APEX award criteria. Standing L to R: Norma Nocilla, BSHA LPN CPHQ, Director of Quality Management / CQO, Barbara Bossi, RN,VP Patient Care Services, Marilyn Rudolph, VHA, Gina McCabe, Director of Clinical Operations / Patient Safety Officer, Michelle Churney, Nurse Manager, Ruth Renna, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Trina Augustine, Infection Control RN, John Nilsson, Pres. & CEO.
Irving, Texas – Community Medical Center Healthcare Systems has received the Achieving Patient Care Excellence (APEX) Award from VHA Pennsylvania, the regional arm of VHA Inc., the national health care alliance. Community Medical Center won the award for its work to improve surgical care and prevent surgical infections.
The award recognizes Community Medical Center for meeting or exceeding national standards for care in this area. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will no longer pay hospitals for the cost of treating many of these conditions.
“Community Medical Center’s goal is to promote and provide the best practice outcomes for our patients.” stated, John Nilsson, Interim CEO and President of Community Medical Center.
“VHA works with dozens of hospitals across Pennsylvania, and our mission is to help them become leading performers. We’re proud to say that many members have certainly demonstrated clinical excellence” said Steve Johnson, chief executive officer of Susquehanna Health and VHA Pennsylvania Board Chair. “VHA supports hospitals as they work to improve clinical care by providing Web tools to help them assess their current performance and clinical blueprints that guide better performance. Regional collaboratives and action planning meetings offer member networking opportunities to help accelerate the pace of internal change.”
Cliff Shannon, consultant with Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative, states “Public expectations, payer demands, and government mandates are pushing hospitals to provide better care. By recognizing these select hospitals with clinical quality awards, VHA is demonstrating that hospitals can overcome many obstacles that often stand in the way of achieving clinical excellence. They are to be congratulated for their fine work.”
VHA has 16 regional offices across the nation. Each office serves as a hub for the delivery and development of programs and services that help hospitals improve their operational and clinical performance.
VHA Inc., based in Irving, Texas, is a national alliance that provides industry-leading supply chain management services and supports the formation of regional and national networks to help members improve their clinical and economic performance. With 16 offices across the U.S., VHA has a track record of proven results in serving more than 1,400 not-for-profit hospitals and more than 23,000 non-acute care organizations nationwide.
CLICK to view APEX program.
Renowned economist Reinhardt advocates reforming health system
Other CATCH '09 experts discuss art & science of new cardiac treatments
By Daniel Axelrod
CATCH '09 Correspondent
World renowned economist Uwe Reinhardt recently told Northeast Pennsylvania medical leaders that real health care reform isn't possible without an individual mandate, community rating and guaranteed-issue coverage.
The remarks came during the second annual Convergence Around Technologies Cardiovascular Health Conference, held in late October at the Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel in Scranton.
The CATCH '09 Conference - presented by the Community Medical Center, Mercy Hospital, Moses Taylor Hospital and the Commonwealth Medical College as educational partners - has quickly become a major local gathering for health care and community leaders, said Dr. Russell Stahl, an event organizer and CMC's chief of cardiothoracic surgery. Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania was a major sponsor for the event.
This year's conference focused on treatment of advanced congestive heart failure, particularly in the elderly, as well as palliative care and health care reform. Reinhardt, who teaches at Princeton University, gave the keynote speech before answering questions in a breakout session.
"CATCH '09 really focused on health policy, greater collaboration and technological convergence in the U.S. health care system and locally," Stahl said. "Health care reform is taking us toward global payment reform and an integrated delivery system model with new payment methods."
Next year's conference will discuss local convergence when it comes to how doctors can collaborate to avoid the duplication of services and promote high quality care, Stahl added.
In this year's keynote speech, Reinhardt stressed that the federal government must reform America's health care delivery system soon or risk skyrocketing health care costs that threaten to harm the middle class.
He thinks reforms will fail if they don't include a mandate for all individuals to carry health insurance and public subsidies to allow those who can't afford coverage to buy it.
Plus, he said the government should institute a guaranteed-issue requirement for insurers to cover everyone and a community rating provision so premiums aren't based on health history.
Rather than slapping negative labels on health reform initiatives and dismissing them, Reinhardt said providers, payers, pharmaceutical companies and patients must all collaborate for success.
"We shouldn't default to clichés," Reinhardt said. "We shouldn't just say ‘It's socialized medicine, so let's not accept it.'"
If the medical community doesn't work together, "at least a decade of fierce insurgent war among tribal chiefs" will hamper reforms, he said. That's already a likely scenario, said Reinhardt, because any reforms to save the health system money will inevitably come from the bottom-line of one of the medical community's stakeholders.
At the current trajectory of rising health care costs, Reinhardt estimated that health care spending as a percentage of gross domestic product - which currently totals 16 percent - will grow to 40 percent by 2050. Rising health costs aren't primarily spurred by heart disease, the elderly, Baby Boomers consuming more care or "the myth of Medicaid bankrupting the system," said Reinhardt.
Instead, the 6 percent annual growth is driven by all Americans receiving ever more sophisticated and pricey tests and treatments, which represents our "passionate, promiscuous and illicit love affair" with medical care. Americans must now turn their relationship with medical consumption into a "mature" and "stable marriage," he added.
At the same time, health care spending is not a bad thing per se, said Reinhardt, because it's the "economic locomotive for America now." But he doesn't think we should lead industrialized nations in our rate of health care spending growth.
That's because the U.S. medical community can generate savings by installing electronic health systems and educating Americans to take better care of themselves from a young age, Reinhardt said. Other ways to reduce health system costs include using the most cost effective and appropriate treatments, lowering administrative costs, lowering profits, creating integrated medical delivery systems and cutting mistakes, Reinhardt added.
Until health care reforms are enacted, the 5 percent to 8 percent of Americans who buy individual health plans will continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of rising insurance costs, Reinhardt said. And the dwindling spending-power of the middle class will keep eroding precipitously, which ultimately will harm America, Reinhardt added.
Reinhardt's remarks dovetailed in part with the palliative care message of Dr. Eric Cassell. Though Cassell mostly stayed away from talk of money, the former Cornell University professor of public health stressed that resources devoted to palliative care are often the best spent. That's because doctors commonly focus on helping failing patients survive in pain rather than finding ways for them live in comfort as their lives end, Cassell said.
Cassell described a medical system in which doctors often think of very sick patients "in the language of disease." Such doctors see patients less as people and more as a set of vital signs that need to be improved at any cost. Yet, patients should be considered in the language of "well being, goals and functions," Cassell added. Cassell raised the proverbial question: at what point does the suffering a person is enduring to feel well cease to be worth it given the likelihood of recovery? That occurs, he said, "when a patient hasn't gotten better in the average time it takes for a patient to get better" given their age, condition, medical history and all the resources a doctor has expended.
For his part, Dr. John Boehmer, a cardiac transplant specialist at Penn State College of Medicine, outlined technological advances in ventricular assist devices that may improve the cost/benefit ratio of treating sick patients. Most of the expensive pulsatile and nonpulsatile devices require more research and refinement before they become mainstream treatments. But more surgeons are using them as destination therapies, Boehmer said.
"Dr. Boehmer reinforced the need for this technology and the fact it is evolving to the point it might become commonplace," said Dr. Richard Abramowitz, who heads Wilkes-Barre General Hospital's cardiology department. "Dr. Cassell discussed knowing when the need isn't there to implement the technology - that's the art of medicine."
In a separate conference breakout session, Dr. Stahl screened a film of his patient Charlie Flynn, now 83, who underwent valve replacement surgery. Flynn's strong will to live and his health history made the surgery possible even for an older patient in failing health. Yet, Flynn's story represented one of the tough choices doctors face daily about whether to continue treatment.
"CATCH '09 was successful because it really probed the questions surrounding when a doctor should intervene with cutting-edge technology and when it's time to stop and just make the patient comfortable," said Dr. Christopher Dressel, director of Mercy Hospital's cardiac cath lab. "This year's speakers provided their fascinating take on these questions amid the backdrop of Uwe Reinhardt's broader discussion on health care reform."
Community Medical Center receives American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines Gold Performance Achievement Award
For Immediate Release
Contact: Jane Gaul
Phone: 570-969-7002
j.gaul@cmchealthsys.org
SCRANTON, PA, October, 29, 2009 — Community Medical Center recently received the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines – Coronary Artery Disease Gold Performance Achievement Award for the second year in a row for sustained performance. The award recognizes Community Medical Center's commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of cardiac care that effectively improves treatment of patients hospitalized with coronary artery disease. Stephen J. Voyce, MD, CMC Cardiologist and GWTG Physicians Champion stated, "This confirms CMC’s commitment to evidence based treatments which have been established to improve cardiac patient outcomes."
Under the Get With The Guidelines – CAD program, patients are started on aggressive risk reduction therapies such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, aspirin, ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers in the hospital and receive smoking cessation/weight management counseling as well as referrals for cardiac rehabilitation before they are discharged. Hospitals that receive the Get With The Guidelines - CAD Gold Performance Achievement Award have demonstrated for 36 consecutive months that at least 85 percent of its eligible coronary patients (without contraindications) are discharged following the American Heart Association's recommended treatment guidelines.
"The American Heart Association applauds Community Medical Center for its success in implementing the appropriate evidence-based care and protocols to reduce the number of recurrent events and deaths in cardiovascular disease patients," said Gregg C Fonarow, M.D., National Chairman of the Get With The Guidelines Steering Committee and Director of Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center. "Community Medical Center has achieved a high level of performance in terms of implementing these life-prolonging treatments."
"Community Medical Center is dedicated to making our cardiac unit among the best in the country, and the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines program is helping us accomplish that by making it easier for our professionals to improve the long-term outcomes of our cardiac patients," said John Nilsson, CEO and President of Community Medical Center. "We are pleased to be recognized for our dedication and achievements in cardiac care."
The American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines – CAD program helps hospitals increase the use of and adherence to the association’s secondary prevention guidelines for coronary artery disease. Developed to assist healthcare professionals follow proven standards and procedures before patients are discharged, Get With The Guidelines – CAD can help Community Medical Center reduce the risk of recurrent heart attacks and death in treated patients. The program, which works by mobilizing teams in acute care hospitals to implement American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology secondary prevention guidelines.
According to the American Heart Association, approximately 610,000 people suffer a new heart attack and 325,000 experience a recurrent heart attack each year. Statistics also show 1.26 million individuals are affected by CAD* each year. Additionally, one in five deaths in the United States is caused by CAD.
*CAD data was taken from 2009 AHA CHD Statistical Update
Community Medical Center Surpasses State Standards in Cardiac Readmissions
For Immediate Release
Contact: Jane Gaul
Phone: 570-969-7002
j.gaul@cmchealthsys.org
SCRANTON, PA, August 14, 2009 — According to a new report released by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4), Cardiac Surgery in Pennsylvania 2006-2007, Community Medical Center outperformed all other hospitals in the surrounding areas for 7-day and 30-day readmission for patients undergoing Coronary artery bypass graft, (CABG) surgery, as well as 7-day readmission of patients having valve replacement combined with CABG surgery.
Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery is a surgical procedure used to treat patients with blockages in the coronary arteries. According to PHC4 data, the most common reasons for readmission following these procedures are infections and congestive heart failure. We have minimized these and other adverse outcomes, leading to improved overall results from open heart surgery.
"CMC results regularly surpass many providers in our area, as well as some top academic centers in Pennsylvania," states Dr. Russell Stahl. "There is a notable consistency to our product. CMC and its physicians have always been marked as 'expected' or 'better than expected' in PHC4 analyses.”
We invite anyone to visit and see why we provide excellent cardiac surgical care in NEPA, and will do so for years to come. For more information on Community Medical Center and the PHC4 report, visit: www.phc4.org.
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