The CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs Cancer Center was granted Three-Year Accreditation by the Commission on Cancer (CoC), a quality program of the American College of Surgeons. To earn voluntary CoC accreditation, a cancer program must meet 34 CoC quality care standards, be evaluated every three years through a survey process, and maintain levels of excellence in the delivery of comprehensive patient-centered care.

“This accreditation is a tangible sign of our commitment to serving Hot Springs and our entire Southwest Arkansas community by providing the highest quality of compassionate care for our cancer patients,” said CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs President Douglas Ross. “Our patients can rest assured that when they come to CHI Vincent Hot Springs, they benefit from the full continuum of cancer care drawing from the extensive expertise of our entire health care team.”

As a CoC-accredited cancer center, CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs Cancer Center takes a multidisciplinary approach to treating cancer as a complex group of diseases that requires consultation among surgeons; medical and radiation oncologists; diagnostic radiologists; pathologists; and other cancer specialists. This multidisciplinary partnership results in improved patient care.

The CoC Accreditation Program also provides the framework for CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs to improve its quality of patient care through various cancer-related programs that focus on the full spectrum of cancer care including prevention, early diagnosis, cancer staging, optimal treatment, rehabilitation, life-long follow-up for recurrent disease and end-of-life care. When patients receive care at a CoC facility, they also have access to information on clinical trials and new treatments, genetic counseling and patient centered services including psycho-social support, a patient navigation process and a survivorship care plan that documents the care each patient receives and seeks to improve cancer survivors’ quality of life.

Like all CoC-accredited facilities, CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs Cancer Center maintains a cancer registry and contributes data to the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), a joint program of the CoC and American Cancer Society. This nationwide oncology outcomes database is the largest clinical disease registry in the world. Data on all types of cancer are tracked and analyzed through the NCDB and used to explore trends in cancer care. CoC-accredited cancer centers, in turn, have access to information derived from this type of data analysis, which is used to create national, regional and state benchmark reports. These reports help CoC facilities with their quality improvement efforts.

With more than 1,500 CoC-accredited cancer programs in the U.S. and Puerto Rico,   CoC-accredited facilities diagnose and/or treat more than 70 percent of all newly diagnosed patients with cancer. When cancer patients choose to seek care locally at a CoC-accredited cancer center, they are gaining access to comprehensive, state-of-the-art cancer care close to home. To learn more about cancer care at CHI St. Vincent, visit: chistvincent.com/cancer