Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama Receives Award
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama has received the Brand Excellence Award from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. The annual awards honor Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies that excel in enhancing the overall Blue Cross and Blue Shield Brand image. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama is the only Plan to have received the Brand Excellence Award every year since its inception — all 13 years. There are 39 Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama is recognized with the Brand Excellence Award in the Member Retention category for having the highest member retention rate over the past year.“The Brand Excellence Award reflects the commitment of our associates to provide superior service and products to our members, the providers and to serving communities throughout Alabama,” says G. Phillip Pope, President and CEO, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama.
Riley Inducted into Academy
Reneé Riley, MD of Sports Medicine & Orthopedic Specialists, P.C, was inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons during ceremonies at the Academy’s 75th Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Riley was one of 675 new members inducted. With her primary office at Trinity Medical Center and a satellite office at 119 Health & Wellness Center, Riley Specializes in orthopedic surgery, sports medicine and joint replacement. She is a Member of the American Medical Association, Alabama Physicians for Life, the Southern Medical Association and is a Candidate Member of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine.
York Listed Among Best Physical Therapists in U.S.
Sheree Chapman York, Director of the Physical and Occupational Therapy Department at the Children’s Hospital of Alabama, was recently selected for inclusion in “The Best of the U.S.’s 2008” list of the best professionals in the U.S.York received her BS and M.S. degrees in Physical Therapy from UAB. She recently received the UAB Department of Physical Therapy Alumni Leadership Award. York is also the president of the American Physical Therapy Association Section on Pediatrics and secretary for the World Confederation of Physical Therapy International Organization of Physical Therapists in Pediatrics.
Princeton Baptist Receives Award
Princeton Baptist Medical Center has received the Get With The GuidelinesSM–Heart Failure (GWTG–HF) Bronze Performance Achievement Award from the American Heart Association. The award recognizes Princeton Baptist’s success in implementing high standards of care that improves treatment of patients hospitalized with congestive heart failure (CHF). Princeton Baptist has reached a goal of treating heart failure patients for at least 90 days with 85% compliance to core standard levels of care outlined by the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology secondary prevention guidelines for heart failure patients.Last November Princeton was the only hospital in Alabama to receive AHA’s GWTG—Silver Performance Achievement Award—Coronary Artery Disease. Hospitals receiving this award have demonstrated for at least one year that 85 percent of its coronary patients are discharged following AHA’s recommended treatment guidelines.
Get With The Guidelines is a quality improvement initiative that provides hospital staff with tools that follow proven evidence-based guidelines and procedures in caring for cardiac patients to prevent future hospitalizations.
Graves Named Social Worker of the Year
Vanessa German Graves has been named Social Worker of the Year by the West Alabama Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. Graves, a clinical social worker with the DCH Employee Assistance Program, received her 25-year service award from the Alabama Conference of Social Work earlier this year and was Social Worker of the Year with the Department of Human Resources in 1997. Graves has served on numerous boards, including the Alabama Conference of Social Work, The CITY Program for at-risk youth, and the Quality Assurance Team with Tuscaloosa Department of Human Resources. She has served as adjunct instructor at the University of Alabama. She assisted with Katrina Hurricane relief efforts in 2005 and has served as a Disaster Mental Health Professional with the American Red Cross since 2006.
Birmingham Heart Clinic First to Receive Accreditation
BY CATHY DELOZIERBirmingham Heart Clinic, PC, recently became the first echocardiography laboratory in Birmingham to receive accreditation from the Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Echocardiography Laboratories (ICAEL). The process is reviewed by an independent peer group consisting of members from the American College of Cardiology (ACC), the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE), the Society of Diagnostic Medical Sonography (SDMS) and the Society of Pediatric Echocardiography (SOPE), which makes the final assessment.
“Receiving accreditation was a strategic goal for us, and it turned out to be more difficult than we first thought,” said business administrator William Sester. “We had to put a lot of our policies on paper regarding protocol and compliance. Fortunately, our application went through the first time. We didn’t realize how big accreditation status was until after the fact.”
According to ICAEL marketing director Tammie Sloper, ICAEL accreditation is well respected within the medical community, as illustrated by the support from its four national medical societies related to echocardiography, which include physicians, technologists and sonographers.
While accreditation remains a voluntary process, Sloper said “several Medicare carriers as well as private insurance companies require their providers of echocardiography services to be accredited.”
Currently in Alabama, neither Medicare nor any private insurers require accreditation, but that may soon change.
Rick Rigling, chair of the Council on Cardiac Sonography recently wrote in the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography that many insurance carriers have begun to mandate laboratory accreditation for payment of echocardiac and vascular procedures. One of the largest insurers, UnitedHealthcare, has just announced that it, too, will require lab accreditation, which will pressure a large number of echocardiography labs to get accredited.
According to ICAEL, more than 10 million echocardiograms are performed annually in the United States as the standard diagnostic test to view cardiac structure and blood flow in patients with heart disease. The diagnostic accuracy of the echocardiographic exam is dependent upon the interpretive and technical abilities, as well as the experience and training, of the sonographer performing the noninvasive imaging technique and the physician reading the results.
“A multitude of critical facets contribute to an accurate diagnosis,” Sloper said, “including the skill of the sonographer performing the examination, the type of equipment used, the experience, training and knowledge of the interpreting physician, and quality assurance measures. Referring physicians and patients can rely on ICAEL accreditation as an indication that the facility has proven a commitment to providing quality testing for the diagnosis of heart disorders. Accredited facilities have been carefully critiqued on all aspects of their operations related to echocardiography.”
“We were pleased to be approved and are impressed with the other labs accredited by the ICAEL,” said Charlie Walker, clinical director for the Birmingham Heart Clinic.
With clinical offices in two locations, Birmingham Heart Clinic has an active research department and a full range of diagnostic testing services, including echocardiograms, EKGs, nuclear stress testing, Doppler carotid artery evaluations, noninvasive flow studies of the lower extremity arteries and veins, and cardiac pacemaker and defibrillator testing/follow-up. The practice uses a Toshiba 64-slice CT scanner to potentially reduce patients’ need for invasive heart catheterization studies.
According to the ICAEL, the Birmingham Heart Clinic joins eight other echocardiography labs currently accredited in Alabama, making them nine of the first 1000 echocardiography labs in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico to be recognized by the organization.
Administrative Law Judge Recommends Approval for Trinity
In April, Trinity Medical Center received notice that the administrative law judge has recommended to the Alabama State Health Planning and Development Agency the approval of its Certificate of Need (CON) application for a replacement hospital. “We are excited to receive this positive ruling and look forward to building on Trinity’s strong reputation and taking it to the next generation,” says Bill Heburn, CEO of Trinity Medical Center. “The CON process has many steps and we have now cleared another hurdle in this journey. We are going to continue to work through the system and look forward to being on the Certificate of Need board agenda in May.”
UAB’s Nanda Named President of Society of Geriatric Cardiology
Navin Nanda, MD, professor, UAB Division of Cardiovascular Disease, and senior scientist in the UAB Center for Aging, has been named president of the Society of Geriatric Cardiology.Nanda, who has been at UAB since 1984, has more than 700 scientific publications, authored 13 books and video textbooks and has given more than 2,000 lectures and presentations. He also has been listed in Best Doctors in America since 1994.
He is editor-in-chief of Echocardiography: A Journal of Cardiovascular Ultrasound and Allied Techniques, and is founding president of the American Association of Cardiologists of Indian Origin.
He also has served two terms on the board of directors of the Association of Black Cardiologists, is a Fellow of the Society of Geriatric Cardiology, the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, and president and Distinguished Fellow of the International Society of Cardiovascular Ultrasound.
May 2008