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Laboratory Accreditation Captures Attention of Medicare

From the smallest family practice to the largest acute care facility, whether specialized or a general practice, healthcare organizations nationwide are constantly working to ensure that the highest levels of patient care are being upheld, enacting process improvement initiatives, quality control checks and customer satisfaction surveys. For all of their benefits, however, internal reviews are waning in credibility. Today, the general public, industry peers and even Medicare are all looking to outside peer review organizations to confirm the level of care that patients are receiving.

One such organization garnering recent attention is the Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Echocardiography Laboratories (ICAEL), a peer review group that awards accreditation to echocardiography laboratories based on their ability to meet an established set of standards that speak directly to quality patient care.

“Within the field of echocardiography, the ICAEL accreditation is the ultimate stamp of approval,” stated Leonard Polak, Technical Director, Noninvasive Cardiology, Deborah Heart and Lung Center. “Because accreditation requires information on all aspects of laboratory operation, as well as the submission of actual case studies for review, it forces a department to dissect every procedure, policy and protocol, examining overall performance and establishing inroads for improvement.”

Medicare Makes Bold Move
While accreditation is a voluntary process, Medicare and other third party payers have enacted reimbursement policies throughout the United States that require echocardiography laboratories to obtain ICAEL Accreditation. The addendum is an attempt to cut down on substandard studies, which often lead to preventable repetition of tests and overuse of services.

“No longer will ‘adequate’ hold up in the eyes of Medicare providers,” stated Polak. “Medicare expects a satisfactory level of competence from providers who submit claims for services rendered, and that is exactly what they will get by requiring echocardiography laboratories to attain ICAEL accreditation.”

Joining the Ranks
Consistently lauded for the inimitability of procedures routinely performed in its echocardiography laboratory, Deborah’s Noninvasive Cardiology Department recently advanced its regional status by receiving accreditation through the ICAEL for Adult Transthoracic and Trans-esophageal Echo.

“Deborah, as a whole, has always stood for quality,” declared Polak, who was charged with obtaining accreditation upon his joining the Center in July 2003. “The ICAEL accreditation only reassures the public that Deborah’s Noninvasive Cardiology Department is equally committed to upholding the highest standards of patient care.”

Such a commitment, however, extends beyond just its obtaining the ICAEL accreditation; as a referral center for echocardiography, Deborah conducts a high number of cases, thereby giving it the advantage of being able to identify subtleties that other laboratories might overlook. Additionally, Deborah’s Noninvasive Cardiology Department enjoys being a leader of unique procedures not routinely available at other laboratories, such as strain rate and tissue synchronization imaging, myocardial contrast echocardiography, and, by year’s end, parametric three-dimensional imaging.

“Deborah’s Noninvasive Cardiology Department has long been a leader in echocardiography, continuously offering procedures not routinely available in most office or community hospital laboratories, procedures that extend even outside of the echocardiography laboratory, such as intracardiac echocardiography, which is performed in Deborah’s Cardiac Catheteri-zation Laboratory,” said Allen Mogtader, MD, Director, Noninvasive Cardiology. “Still, what remains most notable is the Department’s exceptionally high outcomes in regards to the staples of echocardiography: the transesophageal echoes, transthoracic echoes and stress echoes, procedures that have positioned Deborah as one of the region’s premier laboratories, as evidenced by the recent ICAEL accreditation.”

Lending Credibility
The ICAEL was established with the support of the American Society of Echocardiography, the American College of Cardiology and the Society of Pediatric Echocardiography to provide a peer review mechanism to encourage and recognize the provision of quality echocardiographic diagnostic evaluations through a process of voluntary accreditation. A nonprofit organization, the ICAEL is dedicated to ensuring high quality patient care and to promoting healthcare.

When considering applications for accreditation, the ICAEL examines quality assurance within the department, reviews policies and procedures for safety, evaluates the steps taken for filing a late report, critiques infection control, and analyzes protocol for every test the department performs, among other things. Additionally, all department employees are required to make available job-related information, such as medical licenses, certifications, schooling, fellowships, the number of echoes they performed and interpreted over the last five years, and a record of their continuing medical education certificates.

The last requirement was perhaps the easiest for Deborah to meet, as its Noninvasive Cardiology Department is one of the few laboratories in the region that maintains full-time physicians assigned to interpret all echoes. This credential alone improves the diagnostic ability and accuracy of the laboratory.

“Because the testing done in Noninvasive Cardiology is used throughout the hospital, it is extremely important that the information gathered is absolutely correct,” said Polak, who’s Department boasts an annual patient load of roughly 8,000. “Coming from an unbiased outside organization, the ICAEL accreditation lends support to Noninvasive Cardiology’s own claims that we continuously achieve exceptional medical results.”

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