Starting in January 2017, the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association will offer hospitals co-branded cardiovascular accreditation services. The organizations had previously offered such services separately.
The combined accreditation services will include process-improvement tools that incorporate evidence-based science, clinical best practices and other quality initiatives. They'll also factor in joint ACC/AHA guidelines and will develop more accreditation products over time.
“Bringing together the collective resources and expertise of our two organizations, we have a unique opportunity to further accelerate the improvement of cardiovascular care for all Americans,” said Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association, in a news release.
“The ACC and AHA are committed to reducing duplication and confusion in the marketplace and providing hospitals with a single source for state-of-the-art accreditation services,” explains a new website for the joint accreditation collaboration.
“These services will enhance quality and optimize patient outcomes and hospital financial performance by integrating the very latest evidence-based science and ACC/AHA guidelines into a comprehensive suite of accreditation services,” it adds.
Those accreditation services will cover chest pain, cardiac catheterization, atrial fibrillation, heart failure and a number of other aspects of cardiac care. They are supposed to improve both patient outcomes and hospital financial performance.
The American College of Cardiology is a medical society with 52,000 members that aims to “reduce the incidence, severity and complications of cardiovascular disease as we promote prevention, reduce disparities in health care, and improve personal and population-based cardiovascular health.” It has a family of affiliated journals that publish research into cardiovascular disease.
The American Heart Association is a Dallas-based voluntary organization that advocates for public health policies and funds research to fight heart disease and stroke.
In January, the ACC added accreditation services through a merger with the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care.
