Accreditation
South Central Regional Medical Center
First DNV Accredited Hospital In Mississippi
LAUREL, Miss., February 17, 2009 – South Central Regional Medical Center is accredited by DNV Healthcare. DNV, the first new federally approved hospital accreditation provider in more than 30 years. South Central is the first DNV accredited health care organization in Mississippi.
“The DNV accreditation program provides us the opportunity to simultaneously satisfy our Medicare accreditation requirements and implement the ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System all at the same time,” said Doug Higginbotham, Executive Director at South Central Regional Medical Center. “This is much more than an accreditation program, it’s a catalyst for our ongoing commitment to patient safety and clinical quality.”
Accreditation can directly affect the quality of hospital care. Why? Because while undergoing the accreditation process, a hospital makes critical decisions about how it treats diseases, stores medications, and allocates clinical staffing. In short, accreditation impacts the way hospitals operate.
Taking Accreditation To An All New Level
DNV Accreditation is based on the company’s innovative NIAHOSM standards that encourage collaboration between different hospital departments. Unlike previous approaches to accreditation, DNV focuses on what works best for each hospital and therefore opens the door to innovation.
“The key thing about this process that we’re finding is its ability to break down silos within the organization, and to promote the best ideas no matter where they come from,” says Higginbotham.
South Central Regional Medical Center has been Joint Commission accredited for years and hospital personnel are very familiar with the accreditation process, but Joint Commission does not require ISO certification. “We feel that by moving from Joint Commission accreditation to DNV accreditation we are taking our organization to an all new level,” he said. “The DNV/ISO 9001 process requires a lot of hard work on our part, but we are up to the task,” Higginbotham.
ISO 9001 is recognized by businesses around the world as the benchmark for continual quality improvement. Innovative hospitals have started embracing ISO as a way to identify and focus on the most successful approaches to patient care, billing and other
critical aspects of running a modern hospital system.
“The DNV surveyors visited our hospital in early January, 2009, as part of our first DNV accreditation survey. The surveyors were very professional and provided us good information about ways to improve services to our patients. They were very complimentary of our organization,” Higginbotham said. “We look forward to a long relationship with this organization.”
As with all accreditation programs, surveyors from the organization will visit the hospital on regular annual intervals to monitor the organization’s progress in implementing the new requirements.
About SCRMC
South Central Regional Medical Center is a 285-bed, public not-for-profit hospital located in Laurel, MS. The hospital primarily serves a 4-county area: Jones County, Jasper County, Wayne County and Smith County. The organization was founded in 1952.
About DNV Healthcare
DNV Healthcare is a division of DNV (Det Norske Veritas), an independent foundation dedicated to safeguarding life, property and the environment. DNV has 300 offices in 100 different countries, and its primary US hospital accreditation office is located in Cincinnati, Ohio. For more information about DNV Accreditation, please visit www.dnvaccreditation.com.