Mary Lou Woodford on CoC Accreditation Compliance

Mary Lou Woodford, RN, BSN, MBA, CCM, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder, Cancer Resource Foundation, Inc, provides guidance on staying compliant with the new patient navigation accreditation standards from the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC).

Woodford notes that staying compliant with the new CoC standards relies heavily on conducting the required community needs assessment. The assessment should be conducted every 3 years and should identify the population served, demographic information, and cancer health disparities. During this assessment resources and plans should be identified to help address barriers to care.

Each year incremental changes should be made in order to meet the larger 3-year goal. At this annual assessment, barriers to care should be reassessed, reevaluated, and modified. Woodford adds that when the plan is created small outcome measures should be put into place to ensure that larger goals are being met.