Northwest Community Healthcare (NCH) has once again earned The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval® for Hospital Accreditation by demonstrating continuous compliance with its performance standards. The Gold Seal of Approval® is a symbol of quality that reflects an organization’s commitment to providing safe and effective patient care.
NCH underwent a rigorous, unannounced on-site survey in December. During the review, a team of Joint Commission expert surveyors evaluated compliance with hospital standards related to several areas, including emergency management, environment of care, infection prevention and control, leadership, and medication management. Surveyors also conducted on-site observations and interviews.
“Once again, achieving Joint Commission accreditation reinforces NCH’s goal of continually striving toward excellence in healthcare,” says NCH CEO Steve Scogna. “This validation is the result of NCH staff working together to develop and implement approaches to improve care for our patients.”
The Joint Commission has accredited hospitals for more than 60 years. More than 4,000 general, children’s, long-term acute, psychiatric, rehabilitation and specialty hospitals currently maintain accreditation from The Joint Commission, awarded for a three-year period.
NCH has been continuously accredited since 1961 and currently carries Joint Commission accreditation in home care and hospital care. NCH also is certified by The Joint Commission in primary stroke and advanced palliative care. NCH’s palliative care program became the first in Illinois and among the first 10 acute care hospitals in the nation to earn advanced certification for palliative care from The Joint Commission.
NCH also was recently named a Top Performer on Key Quality Measures® by The Joint Commission. NCH was recognized for excellence in heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care accountability measures. The Top Performer program recognizes hospitals for improving performance on evidence-based interventions that increase the chances of healthy outcomes for patients with certain conditions, including heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, surgical care, children’s asthma, stroke, venous thromboembolism and perinatal care, as well as for inpatient psychiatric services and immunizations.
“Our continuous compliance with the high quality standards of The Joint Commission reassures our patients that NCH is committed to maintaining consistent quality and safe care processes,” says Tricia Elliott, Executive Director, Service Excellence, at NCH. “NCH is committed to providing the highest quality and safest care for our patients and the community.”
The Joint Commission’s hospital standards are developed in consultation with healthcare experts and providers, measurement experts and patients. The standards help hospitals measure, assess and improve performance.
“Joint Commission accreditation provides hospitals with the processes needed to improve in a variety of areas from the enhancement of staff education to the improvement of daily business operations,” says Mark G. Pelletier, R.N., M.S., chief operating officer, Accreditation and Certification Operations, The Joint Commission. “In addition, our accreditation helps hospitals enhance their risk management and risk reduction strategies. We commend NCH for its efforts to become a quality improvement organization.”
About Northwest Community Healthcare (NCH)
Serving Chicago’s northwest suburbs since 1959, NCH is a comprehensive, patient-centered system of care that serves more than 350,000 outpatients each year and more than 20,000 inpatients treated annually at the 496-bed acute care hospital in Arlington Heights. The award-winning hospital holds the prestigious Magnet designation for nursing excellence, is designated as a Primary Stroke Center, earned the Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval in 2014, and was awarded the Leapfrog Group’s designation as one of the nation’s Top Hospitals based on quality and safety criteria. NCH has four Immediate Care locations in the northwest suburbs and operates an NCH Easy Access walk-in clinic in Palatine. NCH has a medical staff of more than 1,000 physicians, which includes the board-certified primary care doctors and specialists of the NCH Medical Group. These physicians have selected our facility as a place where they want to treat and care for their private patients. For more information, or to find a doctor on the NCH Medical staff, visit www.nch.org.
About The Joint Commission
Founded in 1951, The Joint Commission seeks to continuously improve health care for the public, in collaboration with other stakeholders, by evaluating health care organizations and inspiring them to excel in providing safe and effective care of the highest quality and value. The Joint Commission accredits and certifies more than 20,500 health care organizations and programs in the United States, including hospitals and health care organizations that provide ambulatory and office-based surgery, behavioral health, home care, laboratory and nursing home services. An independent, not-for-profit organization, The Joint Commission is the nation’s oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care. The Joint Commission has two nonprofit affiliate organizations: The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare aims to solve health care’s most critical safety and quality problems and Joint Commission Resources (JCR) provides consulting services, educational services and publications. Joint Commission International, a division of JCR, accredits and certifies international health care organizations. Learn more about The Joint Commission at www.jointcommission.org.
Get updates from The Cardinal ALL NEWS FEEDS on Facebook. Just ‘LIKE’ the ‘Arlington Cardinal Page (become a fan of our page). The updates cover all posts and sub-category posts from The Cardinal — Arlingtoncardinal.com. You can also limit feeds to specific categories. See all of The Cardinal Facebook fan pages at Arlingtoncardinal.com/about/facebook …