Parrish Medical Center is the first in the United States to be awarded
Integrated Care Certification from The Joint Commission,
the nation’s premier healthcare accrediting body.
According to The Joint Commission, integrated care certification recognizes that Parrish Medical Center is improving patient outcomes with better coordinated care and demonstrates commitment to ensuring that high-quality care transcends the walls of its hospital. The certification represents a giant leap forward for healthcare.
With this certification, Parrish Medical Center is also introducing Parrish Healthcare.
Parrish Healthcare is a groundbreaking network of healthcare providers that includes:
■ Parrish Medical Center, a Mayo Clinic Care Network member and one of America’s most recognized hospitals for clinical quality, patient safety and healing environments
■ Parrish Medical Group, National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) certified patient and family-centered medical homes
■ Florida Health Network, a regional network of healthcare providers, insurers and others.
Parrish Medical Center took the lead in creating a regional network of healthcare providers who are committed to working together to practice evidence-based care and to engage in collaborative initiatives that result in superior levels of patient safety and quality outcomes and reduced healthcare costs.
What is Integrated Care?
The term integrated care is more than a healthcare buzzword. According to the January/February 2016 issue of Healthcare Executive magazine, “it is a legal arrangement that permits providers to collaborate in improving quality and efficiency of care.” That arrangement requires hospitals and physicians to commit to practicing evidence-based care and engaging in collaborative initiatives that support elimination of patient harm, achievement of high-quality outcomes and reduced costs. That’s the textbook definition of what is formed with Parrish Healthcare. To Parrish, integrated care is also the art of healing, which integrates the precision of evidence-based medicine with the human (person and family) experience to improve lives through superior healthcare quality, safety, service and reduced costs.
Collaboration between healthcare providers is preferable to costly competition that raises your costs and does nothing to improve care. Collaboration has instead been one of its strategic initiatives since even before the enactment of the Affordable Care Act.
Parrish Healthcare’s care integration includes primary and preventive care, outpatient services, inpatient acute hospital care, and post-acute care, including skilled nursing, rehabilitation, home health services, and palliative care.
Why does Integrated Care Certification matter?
The Joint Commission began offering Integrated Care Certification in July 2015 to recognize hospitals and ambulatory care settings that excel at integrating information-sharing, transitions of care, hand-off communications and other key activities as a patient moves between the hospital and outpatient care settings. The Joint Commission’s overarching goal is interactive engagement of providers and patients throughout the care cycle. By integrating care across the continuum, this positively affects patient outcomes.
“On behalf of The Joint Commission, I want to congratulate Parrish Medical Center on becoming the first organization in the country to earn the Integrated Care Certification,” said Mark Pelletier RN, MS, Chief Operating Officer, The Joint Commission.
“This certification recognizes Parrish Medical Center’s dedication to improving patient outcomes with better coordinated care. It is also a benefit to the surrounding community Parrish serves, and it reflects its commitment to ensuring high-quality care transcends the walls of its hospitals.”
Learn more about Parrish Medical Group at ParrishMedGroup.com
