It’s not enough just to satisfy our own demanding standards of patient care. AtlantiCare also meets the quality standards of nationally recognized organizations including the American College of Surgeons, College of American Pathologists, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Our Continually Improving Performance program entails five steps:
- Planning, including the establishment of priorities based on patient needs, and our organizational vision.
- Designing, when we need a new service or facility, or an existing service needs significant change.
- Measuring, identifying metrics and gathering relevant data to determine our level of performance.
- Assessing, analyzing and interpreting our performance data.
- Implementing, refining the process based on our gathered data to achieve better outcomes.
Ongoing key initiatives at AtlantiCare include patient safety, medication safety, clinical practice guidelines (most effective diagnostic and treatment methodologies and evidence-based protocols), participation in the national 100,000 Lives campaign, and regular surveys that measure patients’ perceptions, opinions and overall satisfaction with AtlantiCare services and programs. We are also part of the National Donation Breakthrough Collaborative and Surgical Care Improvement Project.