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The National Gaucher Disease Treatment Center Sets High Benchmark for Quality Care and Research esignation as a “Center of Excellence” is one of the most coveted and prestigious titles awarded to any health care center or institution. As much as the designation is pursued, it is also misunderstood and may be a misnomer depending on how well a treatment center lives up to its reputation or seeks to leverage the moniker for marketing purposes. By anyone’s standards, the National Gaucher Disease Treatment Center at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut is a genuine Center of Excellence, not only recognized as such throughout the US and internationally but providing the kinds of services that have established it as one of the preeminent programs in clinical care, research and education in this prototype lysosomal storage disease. For the term “Center of Excellence” to have any meaning, it must be more than simply a self-designated marketing tool to attract more patients. Consumers who see the term may readily conclude that the “Center” has subjected itself to, and successfully “passed,” a certification protocol conducted by an official and independent screening entity. The Yale program and other bona fide Centers of Excellence in their respective fields of patient care successfully integrate and carry out three primary missions: provision of clinical services, teaching and research. Their intent is to create high-quality products that can be offered to patients, employers, payers and others at a competitive price. Although marketing the products is clearly a necessity, this is ancillary to the creation of the Center, not central to it. Given the absence of any official criteria developed by a third party, it is up to each institution to decide what constitutes a “Center of Excellence.” Ideally, every institution should establish, and widely disseminate, formal guide-lines in this regard. The existence (and consistent application) of creation and performance standards are what confer credibility on a “Center of Excellence,” not the simple use of the words in its name, according to James J. Hamilton, MD, and Steven E. Fisher, MBA, in their article in the AAOS Bulletin, a publication of the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons. The National Gaucher Disease Treatment Center embodies what Hamilton and Fisher suggest are key characteristics of Centers of Excellence. A center must “create a system or standard for measuring all the services offered at the center, 18 Advances in Gaucher Disease and constantly monitor the data to see how well your center is performing against internal benchmarks, peers, literature and any accrediting agency or payer standards. If there are service areas that are lacking — for example, if it took several hours for a patient to receive labs or if radiology is backlogged for months — there must be processes in place for immediately rectifying and addressing these deficiencies. Centers of excellence are patient-focused, patient- centric organizations. They excel through efficiencies and standardization, through collecting and using their data. They become oppor- tunities to differentiate an institution in a market by offering measurable, high-quality care in an era of accountability. The National Gaucher Disease Treatment Center brings together multidisciplinary expertise to diagnose and treat Gaucher Disease (Types 1-3). According to its mission, available on its website, “Our comprehensive approach is to diagnose and evaluate the burden of disease through a series of tests, all conducted at our facility. We are then able to identify the optimal treatment path for each patient. Our core mission is advancing patient care through cutting edge clinical translational research to enhance predictive evaluation and monitoring while offering a wide repertoire of therapies.” Recognizing a Center of Excellence The National Gaucher Disease Treatment Center brings together multidisciplinary expertise to diagnose and treat Gaucher Disease (Types 1-3). Artist Ted Meyer lectures to a class at the treatment center, reviewing his artwork and how it relates to aspects of the disease. D


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