In The News

Cancer Center Receives Five Commendations From Survey

The Cecilia Gonzalez De La Hoya Cancer Center at White Memorial has received five commendations in the formal results from its American College of Surgeons (ACoS) survey. The survey was conducted on April 2, and the final report was received May 30.

Commendations were received in these five areas:

Outcomes analysis
The Cancer Center performed 100 percent more cancer outcome studies then required. One study includes benchmarking WMMC breast cancer data against national outcomes, as a way to see how we are doing with treating cancer – and we do very well.

Abstracting Timeframe
We send accurate cancer registry information to state and national databases on time, every time. Cancer registries systematically collect data about cancer and tumor diseases: a complete summary of patient history, diagnosis, treatment, and status is collected for every patient. The data is used to pprovide follow-up information for cancer surveillance,  calculate survival rates, allocate resources at the hospital, community, regional or state level, develop educational programs, and evaluate the effectiveness of various treatments.

Staging
Our physicians hospital-wide are documenting what stage a patient’s cancer is in. Staging of cancer is important because the stage at diagnosis is the most powerful predictor of survival, and treatments are often changed based on the stage. Kudos to our physicians!

Prevention and Early Detection
We do 200 percent more cancer prevention and early detection outreach than is required by the ACoS. We do many breast lectures, prostate screenings, colorectal lectures, skin and oral cancer screenings for the community, most of them bilingual.

Cancer Related Improvements
We implemented more than 200 percent more cancer related improvements departmentally and hospital wide then was required by the ACoS. There are very stringent requirements on what qualifies as an acceptable “improvement.” This commendation shows that our Cancer Center is very pro-active and progressive. 


Posted 6/24/08