June 27, 2018
St. Peter’s Health has received full accreditation from DNV GL – Healthcare, an important step in its multi-year transformation process to become the gold standard for health care in Montana by 2025. DNV GL’s innovative program integrates ISO 9001 compliance with the Medicare Conditions of Participation (COPs).
The DNV GL program is more closely aligned with the COPs and takes the process to another level with ISO 9001, said Wade Johnson, SPH Chief Executive Officer.
“Accreditation has always been vitally important to our work at St. Peter’s,” Johnson said. “Through this new program, we’re holding ourselves to a higher standard that is more consistent with our commitment to provide the highest quality of care for each and every patient.”
ISO 9001 is the preeminent quality management system used by people-intensive businesses around the world. A growing number of U.S. hospitals are embracing ISO as a way to identify, standardize and then continually improve upon the most successful approaches to patient care, billing and other critical aspects of running a modern hospital.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) requires accreditation for hospitals seeking reimbursement for care provided to patients covered by Medicare and Medicaid. Without accreditation, most hospitals would only be able to support a fraction of the patient populations they now serve.
CMS maintains a highly rigorous process of assessing and approving accreditation providers.
DNV GL’s accreditation program, called NIAHO® (Integrated Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations), involves annual hospital surveys – instead of every three years as was the cadence with St. Peter’s former accreditation organization – and encourages hospitals to openly share information across departments, as well as to discover improvements in clinical workflows and safety protocols.
“Our partnership with DNV GL will enable St. Peter’s to continually improve our quality of care,” said Dr. Shelly Harkins, SPH Chief Medical Officer. “Thanks to the great efforts of our staff, we feel very confident we’re on the path to achieving the gold standard of health care by 2025.”
St. Peter’s Health
St. Peter’s Health is a system of health care services including a 123-bed acute care hospital, physician clinics, cancer treatment center, behavioral health unit, urgent care clinics, home health and hospice care, dialysis center and ambulance services. St. Peter’s Health serves the Helena region and southwest Montana counties of Lewis and Clark, Broadwater, Jefferson, Meagher and Powell, with a combined population of approximately 97,000 residents. The mission of St. Peter’s Health is to partner with patients and the community to provide exceptional and compassionate health care.
DNV GL - Healthcare
DNV GL is a world-leading certification body. We help businesses assure the performance of their organizations, products, people, facilities and supply chains through certification, verification, assessment, and training services.
Within healthcare we help our customers achieve excellence by improving quality and patient safety through hospital accreditation, managing infection risk, management system certification and training.
The DNV GL Group operates in more than 100 countries. Our 16,000 professionals are dedicated to helping our customers make the world safer, smarter and greener.
For more information about DNV GL hospital accreditation, visit http://www.dnvglhealthcare.com.