University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) is the newest recipient of accreditation as a Comprehensive Care Center by the Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA). The awarded accreditation is in recognition of the excellence in diagnosis, research and clinical care of pulmonary hypertension (PH) patients.
To earn the accreditation, the center’s care team demonstrated expert and quality collaboration between the pulmonology, cardiology and rheumatology departments, as well as excellence in pharmacology and nursing.
“There is an urgent need for physicians and centers to accurately diagnose, treat and support people with pulmonary hypertension,” Dr. R. James White, leader of the PH team at URMC, in a university news release. “We expect that the PHA accreditation and recognition will improve our connections with healthcare professionals throughout Upstate New York to ensure that more people living with pulmonary hypertension receive the right diagnosis early and accurately and that they get the very best care available.”
URMC is one of three PHA-accredited care centers in New York, and the only one outside of New York City.
“We are happy to see patients who diagnosis remains uncertain, and work collaboratively with local physicians across upstate to optimize treatment strategies for people with confirmed disease,” said Dr. White.
Dr. White, an associate professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, and Pharmacology and Physiology at Rochester, has designed and conducted large clinical studies to improve PH care. He recently co-authored a study showing that the combination of long-standing therapies, rather than using either individually, improved PH outcomes.
The PHA established the accreditation program in 2011 to recognize those U.S. centers with special expertise in pulmonary hypertension, particularly pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Centers accepted into the program demonstrate a commitment to providing expert-level care based on pulmonary hypertension consensus guidelines, as evaluated by the PHA’s Scientific Leadership Council. A requirement of accreditation is enrolling PH patients into the Pulmonary Hypertension Association Registry (PHAR), an organized system of data collection used in both clinical care and disease research.