United States hospitals and other health care institutions will soon have access to a single set of cardiovascular accreditation services through a new collaboration between the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association that is being developed with the help of Wayne State University School of Medicine Professor of Emergency Medicine Phillip Levy, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.C., F.A.H.A.
"It is very exciting, and helps place the Wayne State University School of Medicine at the forefront of quality and process improvement effort as it relates to cardiovascular care," said Dr. Levy, chair of ACC's Accreditation Management Board. "By combining forces to promote accreditation services, the ACC and the AHA will be well-positioned to achieve a shared vision where data is used to inform best practices, and best practices are used to guide care, every time. I am proud to be part of such progressive organizations and look forward to working across disciplines to improve cardiovascular health worldwide."
Dr. Levy's involvement in standardizing processes and promoting best practices through accreditation dates back to 2004, when he joined the Society of Chest Pain Centers, a multidisciplinary organization that sought to improve chest pain patient care. He developed the initial and subsequent tools for that society's accreditation pathway for heart failure, which had expanded services and changed its name to the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care. He was president-elect of the organization in 2015, when discussions to merge with the ACC began. He led the merger team, and became chair of the subsequently formed Accreditation Management Board, a post he will hold for three years. He also sits on the AHA subcommittee tasked with developing the broader, hospital-based cardiovascular center accreditation.
Starting in 2017, hospitals will have access to a suite of co-branded accreditation services focused on all aspects of cardiac care, including chest pain, cardiac catheterization, atrial fibrillation, heart failure and other cardiovascular conditions. ACC and AHA accreditation services will offer hospitals and institutions a single source of state-of-the-art process improvement tools to bridge gaps and integrate evidence-based science, quality initiatives, clinical best-practices and the latest ACC/AHA guidelines into their cardiovascular care processes.
By joining forces, the groups aim to identify and recognize high-performing and complex cardiovascular service lines across the nation to provide unbiased, actionable and achievable benchmarks for hospital and clinical leaders to use as they work to raise their own standards of clinical performance.
Learn more at www.CardiacAccreditation.org, www.scpc.org and www.acc.org