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The Southeast Alabama Medical Center's Advanced Home Medical Equipment office will be moving December 7, 2009 to 810 Hedstrom Drive, Suite 2 Dothan, AL 36301. Please feel free to call us at 334-712-3311 or 1-800-735-5724 if we can assist you.

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Written by Steve Pearce Monday, 14 September 2009 08:21

Southeast Alabama Medical Center is going pink.

And we're encouraging everyone in the Wiregrass to do the same in an effort to help stop the spread of breast cancer. On Thursday, October 1, we're asking everyone to dress in pink and participate in the first-ever “Pink Out Day” in the Wiregrass.

We want the region to turn into a sea of pink as we encourage men, women, boys and girls, to join the fight against breast cancer. The best way to combat breast cancer is to encourage mothers, daughters and sisters to have a mammogram. But don't think breast cancer is limited to just women; men are just as susceptible to falling victim to this deadly disease and also need to know the signs of the disease.

Put on your best pink clothing, drape a pink ribbon in front of your house or business and show your support. The city will be turning the city fountain pink. The Medical

Center will be unveiling the region's largest pink ribbon at 1:30 p.m. in the Women's Center. The ribbon will hang on the front of the hospital throughout the month of October as a reminder to have a mammogram.

We hope this event will leave a lasting impression on the Wiregrass and beyond.

With that in mind, we'd love for you to share your pink photos from the day. Email your photos to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and we'll display them on our website during the month of October.

For more information on “Pink Out Day” or other breast cancer activities, visit www.samc.org.

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Written by Administrator Tuesday, 18 August 2009 10:05

Southeast Alabama Medical Center earns top performer status in Medicare, Premier healthcare alliance value-based purchasing project
Southeast Alabama Medical Center (SAMC) has been named a top performer in a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Premier healthcare alliance value-based purchasing (VBP) project that recognizes hospitals for delivering high quality care in five clinical areas.

Based on fourth-year results from the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) project, SAMC received seven awards for Top Performance and Attainment in the clinical area(s) of Hip and Knee, AMI (acute myocardial infarction – heart attack), CABG (coronary artery bypass graft), Heart Failure and Pneumonia.

“Providing outstanding patient care has always been one of our primary goals,” says Ronald S. Owen, CEO at SAMC. “Our successes in this project are a testament to our ongoing efforts to improvement the quality of care we offer our patients.”

“The successes of the hospitals – small and large, urban and rural, teaching and non-teaching – in the HQID project have led to its consideration as the basis for key national health reforms,” said Susan DeVore, Premier president and CEO. “As the proposal of a national value-based purchasing program becomes a reality, hospitals participating in HQID will have six years experience with such a model.”

About the HQID project
The HQID is the first national project of its kind, designed to determine if economic incentives to hospitals are effective at improving the quality of inpatient care. Through the project, which has been extended by CMS for an additional three years, Premier collects a set of more than 30 evidence-based clinical quality measures from almost 250 hospitals across the country. The quality measures were developed by government and private organizations (for more information on the indicators, visit: www.qualitydemo.com).

HQID tracks process and outcome measures in five clinical areas – acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure, coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), pneumonia, and hip and knee replacement.

Improvements in quality of care saved an estimated 4,700 acute myocardial infarction (AMI/heart attack) patients across the first four years of the project, according to an analysis of mortality rates at hospitals participating in the project. In addition, patients received approximately 500,000 additional recommended evidence-based clinical quality measures, such as smoking cessation, discharge instructions and pneumococcal vaccination, during that same timeframe.

For hospitals participating in the HQID project, the average Composite Quality Score (CQS), an aggregate of all quality measures within each clinical area, improved by 2.2 percent between the project’s third and fourth year for total gains of 17.2 percent over the project’s first four years. 

Additional research by Premier using the Hospital Compare dataset showed that, by March 2008, HQID participants scored on average 6.9 percentage points higher (94.64 percent to 87.36 percent) than non-participants when evaluating 19 common Hospital Compare measures.

About Premier Inc., 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient
The Premier healthcare alliance is more than 2,200 U.S. hospitals and 58,000-plus other healthcare sites working together to improve healthcare quality and affordability. Premier maintains the nation's most comprehensive repository of clinical, financial and outcomes information and operates a leading healthcare purchasing network. A world leader in helping deliver measurable improvements in care, Premier works with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the United Kingdom's National Health Service North West to improve hospital performance. Premier has offices in San Diego, Charlotte, N.C., Philadelphia and Washington.