Friday, May 31, 2002
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Friday, May 31, 2002 |
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Piedmont receives accolades for women's health program Piedmont Hospital, a member of VHA Inc.'s Women's Heart Advantage initiative, shares in the program's latest honor awarded by Foundation for Accountability with its 2002 Ellwood Award. The Women's Heart Advantage initiative was recognized for its outstanding efforts to foster a publicly accountable healthcare system. FACCT, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping Americans make better healthcare decisions, invited nominations for the 2002 Ellwood Awards from more than 1,500 corporate, policy and health industry leaders. Previous winners of this award include The Leapfrog Group, the Institute of Medicine and the Health Care Financing Administration. "Piedmont Hospital is proud to be part of Women's HeartAdvantage, a community-based initiative working to reduce morbidity and mortality of heart disease - the leading cause of death for women," said Nina Montanaro, vice president of public affairs and marketing for Piedmont Hospital. "Women's HeartAdvantage actively links our physicians and the women in our community together in order to increase awareness, improve outcomes and respond to gender-specific symptoms and treatments for heart disease--effectively treating patients as partners in their heart health." The award honors work that continues the legacy of Paul M. Ellwood Jr., M.D. A national leader in efforts to make the health system accountable to consumers for delivering high-quality care, Dr. Ellwood helped guide the development of FACCT, a Portland, Oregon-based organization creating information and tools to help Americans make better healthcare decisions. "Women's HeartAdvantage empowers women to ask critical questions, apply evidence-based knowledge to their own care, engage in risk reduction strategies, and actively seek appropriate care," said Dr. Nancy Wilson, VHA vice president. "VHA-member healthcare providers are engaged to promote cardiovascular health by better understanding the influence of gender on heart disease and utilizing tools and guidelines to assess and care for women." "This year's Ellwood Award winners demonstrate the leadership, vision and action that are moving the healthcare system toward overall accountability and improvement. Developing effective decision-making tools, offering better health plan options, investigating variations in care, activating consumers to work with their providers, and fostering a sense of what the system should offer are all critical steps toward transforming healthcare. "Each of the winners is giving consumers tools to help shape the system themselves," said David Lansky, PhD - President of FACCT.
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