COLUMBIA, SC -- July 3, 2002 -- The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has awarded accreditation to all SleepMed sites in South Carolina. Currently, that includes hospital-based sites at Colleton Medical Center in Walterboro, Georgetown Memorial Hospital in Georgetown, Marion County Medical Center in Marion, Newberry County Memorial Hospital
In Newberry, Palmetto Baptist Medical Center in Columbia, Piedmont Healthcare System in Rock Hill, The Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg, and Tuomey Regional Medical Center in Sumter. In addition, the accreditation includes freestanding sites in Charleston (West Ashley), Lancaster, Myrtle Beach, Summerville and West Columbia.
Among these sites, SleepMed's six-bed center at Palmetto Baptist Medical Center has been and continues to be additionally accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). This full service center is SleepMed's flagship for physician and technologist training, as well as clinical research with nine trials currently underway.
"It has long been our goal to achieve accreditation status on all SleepMed sites and we hope to achieve that goal on a nationwide basis within the next 18-24 months," said Richard K. Bogan, MD, FCCP, Chairman and Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for SleepMed incorporated. He continued, "We selected South Carolina for our first state because it's where we started and where we have the most history."
Dr. Bogan explained that SleepMed has operated from the beginning with accreditation-level policies, procedures and protocols -- and the official accrediation by JCAHO validates SleepMed's commitment to quality with the 90% rating recently received by JCAHO inspectors on South Carolina sites. "While there's always room for performance improvement and quality assurance with outcomes, we were quite pleased at our high score, " said Bogan.
Ambulatory Health Care Accreditation Service status is granted after careful review and approval of many patient care areas, such as: (1) Patient Rights and Organizational Ethics; (2) Assessment of Patients; (3) Care of Patients; (4) Education of Patients and Family; (5) Continuum of Care; (6) Improving Organization Performance; (7) Leadership; (8) Management of Environment of Care; (9) Management of Human Resources; (10) Management of Information; and (11) Surveillance, Prevention and Control of Infection. SleepMed received perfect scores in 7 of the 11 categories.
On a nationwide basis, SleepMed has over 100 sites from coast to coast and performs over 35,000 sleep studies per year. As the national leader in sleep diagnostic and treatment services, SleepMed offers comprehensive sleep diagnostic and treatment services to hospitals interested in a high quality, state-of-the-art sleep center without the financial risk with equipment and labor. SleepMed provides the equipment and installation, technical and administrative labor, supplies, quality assurance, marketing consultations, medical director training and physician support. Hospitals simply provide the furnished and maintaiined space, the billing of the technical component and the marketing of their sleep medicine program.
