At CCME, we have extensive experience working with various partners, collaborators, and clients. We work with key health care associations, medical schools, providers of care, and others to provide the best quality improvement services possible.

Below are testimonials from some of our past and current partners, collaborators, and clients.

• Partners
• Collaborators
• Clients:
  • Hospitals
  • Nursing Homes
  • Physician Offices

Partners

“CCME has played a vital role in helping our state's physician community define and shape our delivery of care while keeping an eye on our bottom line. They have played an invaluable role in the continuum of quality health care throughout the Carolinas.”

“CCME has long been recognized as a cooperative partner and leader in catalyzing systems change in hospitals to deliver the best care possible for patients.”

“They have a proven history of building upon existing partnerships and branching out to include all stakeholders as they continue to expand and grow. Their team of experts maintains strong ties with us, and we appreciate the partnership we have shared for many successful years together with them.”

“I am very happy to say that the relationship has been and will continue to be a great partnership, and we, at the American Heart Association, are happy to be able to work so closely with CCME.”

“CCME shares our passion for the advocacy of older adults. They have an extensive knowledge of the public health arena and the senior population in the Carolinas, and they take their work seriously.”

“CCME has been particularly instrumental in providing ambitious leadership and assistance in the state’s effort to improve the quality of care in North Carolina’s nursing homes.

CCME has been working in partnership with our staff to achieve the CMS Quality Improvement Program and GPRA goals of reducing pressure ulcers and restraint use. CCME offered their endorsement and professional quality improvement assistance in a series of annual letters (2005 –2007) sent by us to notify all NC nursing homes about state restraint and pressure ulcer GPRA goals. We also partnered with CCME, along with other stakeholders, to provide statewide restraint reduction workshops in Fall 2006. About 90 percent of North Carolina’s nursing homes were represented at these events that discussed coding and regulations, resident rights, alternatives to restraint use, and quality improvement.”

“Their experience working with older adults continues to result in effective strategies that positively change health behaviors.”

Collaborators

“Duke University has collaborated with CCME on a wide variety of rewarding quality improvement projects during the past decade. As North Carolina’s leading academic medical center, we recognize and appreciate the value of working closely with our QIO, a recognized leader in health care quality improvement.

CCME is truly dedicated to assuring quality health care through its expert staff and vision. Without reservation we endorse and support CCME in its current and future projects as the Medicare QIO. We look forward to future collaborative relationships with CCME.”

“We value the organization’s tireless service to improving care for our underserved communities, ultimately leading to improved care for all Carolinians. We trust that we will have the opportunity to continue our collaborations with CCME’s seasoned staff.”

Clients

Hospitals

“We have been pleased with our collaboration with CCME, and we appreciate their willingness to commit the necessary resources to meet obligations, work efficiently with health care organizations throughout the state to ensure success with the external review program, and are committed to meeting our deadlines.”

“CCME has been a wonderful resource for Scotland Health Care System. There are inadvertent challenges that health care organizations face as steps are taken to provide more consistent, cost-effective patient care.

CCME has provided our hospital with valuable, ongoing training on the Appropriateness of Care Measures and the Surgical Care Improvement Project. As changes to the abstraction guidelines are introduced, CCME provides comprehensive abstraction summaries. As questions arise, they are readily available to provide answers. Additionally, they have facilitated teleconferences that help to highlight best practices in North Carolina.

In recent months, we have utilized CCME to provide additional physician-specific education for our medical staff on the publicly reported hospital quality initiatives. Dr. Ross Simpson was able to translate these evidence-based measures into terms that physicians can understand and integrate into their daily practice. He was also pivotal in reiterating the importance of these publicly reported measures and how that will directly impact physicians, not just hospitals, in the near future.

We have also participated in a joint venture with the North Carolina Hospital Association and CCME in a Medication Reconciliation Collaborative. Medication reconciliation is a complex process that involves the coordination of many concurrent and complex activities to ensure the patient receives the right medication at the right time. This patient safety collaborative has helped our organization to focus on systematic process improvements as they pertain to the appropriate delivery of medications.

Our organization has also implemented a rapid response team. Educational sessions sponsored by CCME and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement were utilized to help shape this new program and the clinical protocols that are utilized.”

“I believe the [CCME-sponsored] Appropriate Care Measure (ACM) project helped provide us with innovative ideas, validation, and positive feedback. ARMC’s participation in the ACM project has given us many opportunities to acquire knowledge and tools that we can take back and apply at our hospital. Small things learned at our ACM meetings have turned into big ideas for improvement. The quality consultants at CCME have become our personal cheerleaders for change.”

“When the average person reads or hears about quality measures and indicators, it seems so clinical. They may think it only applies to health care providers. It should concern them as a consumer. The outreach activities of CCME help to make these indicators more personal to the consumer/patient…they begin to see these standards as a means to improve the care they receive and help to ensure a better outcome when they need medical care.”

Nursing Homes

“Please extend to Trelles Cordray, CCME interventions specialist, and the rest of your staff our gratitude and admiration for the job performed by the Collaborative. You guys had a sizeable task in helping those of us in the field who have good intentions but just weren’t there yet. Your instruction and support were key to effecting change and helping us to keep the resident at the center of all we do. It was delightful to be able to network with industry and regulatory folks and share with them some of our challenges. We, at Tucker, are pleased that we grew through this association, and we look forward to future sessions. Thanks again! “

“Thank you for asking me to share our statewide success story. I truly meant every word I said at the Collaborative meeting. It just made my heart feel good to be associated with such compassionate people. The following is a summary of my talk at the last [CCME-sponsored] Collaborative meeting:

The week prior to our last Collaborative meeting, I and several nurses from our nursing home, Magnolia Manor of Inman, were at a dinner meeting hosted by our pharmacy. At this meeting, we were seated next to ‘a competitor,’ Valley Falls. In the past (pre-Collaborative), we would have politely spoken to each other, and that would have been the extent of our interaction. Another common practice in the past would have been denying survey tags. If you asked another building how they did on a recent survey, the answer would have been ‘oh, we did great.’ Then you would hear later through the grapevine that the building was in Immediate Jeopardy. No one wanted to share information. Even our own buildings within the same corporation failed to share information. The surveyors even told some of our corporate representatives to share information, that they were seeing the same problems in all buildings. Then along came the CCME Collaborative. Things changed. Even the surveyors are now open to sharing thoughts and ideas. Back to my sitting with Valley Falls: they immediately introduced themselves and stated that they had recently had a survey. They proceeded to share with us all of their tags and what they did to ‘fix them’ and asked us what we were doing to cover those particular issues. This made me feel so very proud to be a part of this partnership. We are all honestly trying to help each other and provide the very best care possible for all of our residents. There is no longer the shame of a tag, only the attempt to do better and help others do better also. This is a win-win for everyone, including residents, facilities, and surveyors.

Hats off to the Collaborative chiefs, the surveyors, and the staff of all facilities in South Carolina. This is truly a success story we can all be proud of. I would encourage the rest of the country to follow suit.”

“CCME has been a great partner for us. They have assisted us in approaching issues that arise within the nursing home in an organized and systematic manner. Because of this, we feel confident when we tackle new issues. The systems that we now have in place enable us to maintain the successes we achieve.”

“This organization [CCME] has been a great resource of education. Over the last year, our most focused area for improvement was on the reduction of restraints. Through a joint working effort with CCME, we succeeded, and our building has been restraint-free since November 2006. CCME provided us with education for the staff and provided our families with information on the risks of restraints in the elderly and the benefits of being restraint-free. The commitment to remain restraint-free has become the facility culture, and staff is now more aware of the benefits to being restraint-free and pays more attention to residents. We work together to come up with innovative approaches to address ways to stay restraint-free and, as a result, the number of falls has been reduced tremendously. I must say in my career as a Director of Nursing this has been one of my proudest accomplishments. To finally watch geriatric residents live a life free of restraints further reinforces to me that anything is truly possible when people work together to make improvements in health care. CCME is a great resource, and I hope more Directors of Nursing utilize these services.”

“CCME is committed to the improvement of care at Sardis Oaks as if they were a business partner. During the several years we have worked together, CCME has ensured that our quality improvement efforts will be effective within our workplace and clinical practices. Participating in their quality improvement initiatives gives us both an opportunity to be accountable in completing our quality improvement plans and gives us tools and resources that are innovative, geared to adult learners, and sensitive to all roles within the facility.”

Physician Offices

“Through our involvement with the [CCME-sponsored] Chronic Disease Management Collaborative, I am confident we provide better evidence-based medical care to our community. This is confirmed in the positive results in our tracking data. We expect to have improved outcomes from this improved care.

We have instituted a number of changes, most of which have been very effective. Through the collaborative, we have learned process-change techniques and strategies. We also have furthered our knowledge of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. By networking with other offices, we have shared our successes and failures together for further change improvements.

Due West Family Medicine found the collaborative to be a very helpful, educational and motivating experience. We believe we have significantly contributed to the collaborative efforts as well. We hope to participate in future collaborative efforts such as this one for our own improvement and to contribute to other practices as well.

“My name is Robert Hollingsworth, and I am a practicing physician assistant in Red Springs, North Carolina. I am in solo practice and manage a rural health clinic. I provide care to a population in one of the poorest counties in our state. It has been essential for me to get the best advice possible when making decisions regarding management and medical standards in my office.

CCME’s DOQ-IT team has been a crucial partner and resource in helping me research, choose and implement an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system in my office. The system not only helps me keep accurate medical records, but allows me to build in reminders and prompts for those issues that are standard and numerous in a general medical practice.

Although I had already decided which program I would purchase, the DOQ-IT team helped me realize the potential for the system and helped our office during the process of implementation of the system. A system like this requires the time and dedication of the office staff. To have an organization like DOQ-IT help negotiate the hurdles common to putting such a practice together was invaluable.

After “going live” with my EHR system, the DOQ-IT team made several visits to my office to help me with minor issues and helped me to begin tracking preventive medicine services and disease-specific quality measures. We are currently working on the issues of reporting practice-level data and understanding the process. With this information, I will be able to have the tools necessary to improve the care provided to my patients and friends.”

We welcome you to send us a testimonial to put on this page. You can mention who you are, what you use our service for, why you choose us, or any story you want to tell about you or us.