Certifications/Accreditations

Commission of Cancer (CoC)

The Cancer Program at Roger Williams Medical Center has been accredited continually by the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons since 1987. The hospital has been designated as an Academic Comprehensive Cancer Program since 2015, and prior to that was categorized as a Comprehensive Community Cancer Program. Accreditation by this entity involves a rigorous set of standards to follow that encompasses the entire spectrum of the hospital’s Cancer Program. These standards include activities related to programs and services the hospital provides, physician services and clinical staffing, data collection and reporting, quality improvement and access to clinical trials, among others.

The Cancer Registry at Roger Williams Medical Center collects a standardized set of data items for every newly diagnosed cancer patient either diagnosed or treated at our hospital. This information is then entered into a database and cases are transmitted securely to the Rhode Island Cancer Registry and to the National Cancer Data Base. Data collected includes demographic data such as age, gender, and race, as well as diagnostic testing, primary site and tissue type, disease staging, treatment, and follow-up survival data. The data collected by the Cancer Registry is also available for queries by hospital physicians and staff to tabulate information for use in enhancing patient care.

The American College of Surgeons (ACS), in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Medicine Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, Baltimore, MD, has launched the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Safety Program for Improving Surgical Care and Recovery (ISCR). This surgical quality improvement program is funded and guided by AHRQ.

The AHRQ Safety Program for ISCR supports hospitals in implementing perioperative evidence-based pathways to meaningfully improve clinical outcomes, reduce hospital length-of-stay, and improve the patient experience. RWMC has been enrolled since September 1, 2020 with the purpose of implementing the colorectal enhanced recovery surgery program. Dr. Abdul Saied Calvino (link to his bio) is leading the multi-disciplinary clinical implementation of ISCR. Dr. Ceyhan (Link to bio) stated “ISCR implementation aligns with CQOSO’s mission and helps us to improve patient journey and quality of care. We are now able to benchmark our patient outcomes with other participants across the United States.”
The American College of Surgeons (ACS) GSV Program presents 32 new surgical standards (2 of which are optional) designed to systematically improve surgical care and outcomes for the elderly. The standards provide a framework for RWMC’s Comprehensive Oncology Program for Elders (COPE) to take an interdisciplinary approach to continuously optimize surgical care for older adults.