BATON ROUGE- A local cancer center was recently awarded the 2017 Outstanding Achievement Award from the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer.

According to a release, the Mary Bird Perkins-Our Lady of the Lake Cancer Center was the only Louisiana accredited program to receive this national honor for surveys performed between Jan. 1 through June 30. The facility was also the only one in the region to receive the award three times consecutively.

“More and more, we’re finding that patients and their families want to know how the health care institutions in their communities compare with one another,” said Lawrence N. Shulman, MD, FACP, chair of the Commission on Cancer. “They want access to information in terms of who’s providing the best quality of care, and they want to know about overall patient outcomes. Through this recognition program, I’d like to think we’re playing a small, but vital role, in helping them make informed decisions on their cancer care.”

The release stated, the purpose of the award is to encourage cancer programs to raise the bar on quality cancer care, with the ultimate goal of increasing awareness about high quality, patient-centered care.

The cancer center was evaluated on 34 program standards categorized within five cancer program activity areas: program management, clinical services, continuum of care services, patient outcomes and data quality.