The Commission on Cancer (CoC), a program of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) focused on quality, has granted three-year accreditation to the cancer program at the Marian L. Shepard Cancer Center, Vidant Beaufort, re-accreditation to The Outer Banks Hospital (TOBH) and re-accreditation as an Academic Comprehensive Cancer Program to Vidant Medical Center (VMC).

To earn this recognition, a cancer program must meet several quality care standards, be evaluated periodically and maintain excellence in the delivery of patient-centered care.

“I am extremely proud of our team for this achievement,” said TOBH president Ronnie Sloan, FACHE. “We’re part of an elite group of critical access hospitals that have an accredited cancer program. In fact, only one percent of critical access hospitals in the U.S. have this designation.”

“We chose to pursue accreditation because we made a commitment to quality for our community,” said Robin Hearne, RN, TOBH director of cancer services. “We knew that the framework for the survey would help us build our cancer program to include early diagnosis, cancer staging, optimal treatment, rehabilitation, lifelong follow-up for recurrent disease and end-of-life care.”

When patients receive care at a CoC facility, they 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.

“Improving survival and quality of life for cancer patients is our number-one priority,” noted TOBH oncologist Dr. William Guenther. “Achieving this accreditation with commendation is a clear benchmark for the high quality and tireless efforts of our cancer services team.”

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