Highest Accreditation Available From Commission on Cancer

Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network's (LVHHN) Cancer Center has achieved Network Cancer Program accreditation, the highest available from the American College of Surgeons' Commission on Cancer (CoC).

Previously, LVH was accredited as a Teaching Hospital Cancer Program for many years. "With this new designation, we're proud to be recognized for providing comprehensive cancer care for patients at both our LVH—Cedar Crest and LVH—Muhlenberg campuses,” said Victor Risch, M.D., Ph.D., chair, LVHHN cancer committee. “Meeting the rigorous standards required for this new highest level of accreditation means that patients can feel confident they are receiving the highest quality cancer care close to home.”

Along with the accreditation, the Cancer Center received commendation in six areas:

• data quality

• physician staging – the assignment of the extent of disease in detail by the patient’s doctor in the medical record

• variety of prevention and early detection programs offered for cancer patients

• patient outcomes and survival analyses for use in monitoring quality care

• number and scope of patient care improvements implemented each year

• establishment of patient care guidelines and level of compliance with guidelines

The Network Cancer Program is a relatively new category of approval from the multi-disciplinary CoC, having been established in 2000 to distinguish programs that provide integrated care, offer comprehensive services in a single organization, and are accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO).

The CoC is composed of Fellows of the American College of Surgeons and from dozens of national cancer-care organizations.

LVHHN’s Cancer Center treated more than 2,800 new cancer patients last year providing comprehensive, integrated services at its two locations in Allentown and Bethlehem. LVHHN conducts the most research of any hospital in the region and currently is participating in 140 national studies to find new and more effective treatments for cancer, including the use of raloxifene to prevent breast cancer in postmenopausal women.

The LVHHN Cancer Center, a founding member of the Penn State Cancer Institute, created the region's first second opinion services for lung cancer, breast cancer and urologic cancers (prostate, kidney, bladder and testicular); was the first in our region to offer patients with brain cancer the option of stereotactic radiosurgery, which uses intense beams of radiation instead of a scalpel, and is the only hospital-based program to offer the newest form of this technology, the Gamma Knife®. LVHHN is the only Cancer Center in the region that treats children's cancer with radiation therapy, and cares for children as young as 3 months. For over a decade, since it first opened in 1993, LVHHN’s Cancer Center has scored in the top one percent in patient satisfaction every year when measured against other outpatient cancer centers in the nation.

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