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10/28/2005 - Alacare's Mark Cook Addresses Seattle Strategy Summit
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Contact: Richard Nieves or Nancy Kucik
Alacare Home Health & Hospice
4752 Highway 280 East
Birmingham, AL 35242
Phone: 205.981.8000 or 800.852.4724
Fax : 205.981.8743
E-mail: Richard.Nieves@alacare.com
Alacare’s Mark Cook Addresses Seattle Strategy Summit
Birmingham, Alabama—Mark Cook, RN, BSN, MBA, Chief Clinical Officer/Chief Operating Officer of Alacare Home Health & Hospice in Birmingham, was a featured speaker at the OCS Information System Strategy Summit in Seattle. OCS is the single largest provider of benchmarking services to home health, hospice and private duty organizations, with more than 1500 clients nationwide. Addressing home care and hospice leaders from around the country, Cook spoke on the topic of “Disease Management in the Home.”
“Alacare has adopted a disease management program to proactively manage patients with chronic disease,” Cook explains. “Our goal is to treat the whole patient and anticipate any problems that might occur. It’s a better way of doing business that leads to improved patient satisfaction.”
Participants in this summit came together to share innovative information strategies that will help design and refine organizational success. In addition to his talk, Cook also represented Alacare as the agency was honored with the OCS Vision Award for Operational Achievement.
“Despite the fact that we already exceeded national benchmark criteria in this area, we were able to identify aspects that could be even better,” says Cook. “Once we pinpointed the specific areas where opportunities for improvement existed, we addressed them accordingly.” In achieving this award-winning goal, Alacare not only further improved its ability to serve its patients, it saved $441,000.
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About Alacare
Alacare Home Health & Hospice is Alabama's oldest and largest privately owned, Medicare-certified home health agency. Headquartered in Birmingham, Alacare is dedicated to providing patients the highest level of skilled nursing, rehabilitative, palliative and hospice care available in the most efficient environment—the patient's own home. Since 1970, Alacare has provided patients with quality home healthcare.
Medicare’s new Home Health Care data reflect that Alacare’s patient-care outcomes in 11 essential areas are among the best when compared to both National and Alabama averages. Interested persons can obtain this data online at http://cms.hhs.gov/quality/hhqi/ or by calling 1-800-MEDICARE.
Services provided include: diabetes education, enterostomal therapy, homecare aides, home medical equipment, hospice/palliative care, infusion therapy, medical nutrition therapy, medical social services, mental health nursing, occupational therapy, pain management, physical therapy, skilled nursing, and speech language pathology.
Alacare’s service area now includes the following counties: Autauga, Barbour, Bibb, Blount, Bullock, Butler, Calhoun, Chambers, Cherokee, Chilton, Clay, Cleburne, Coffee, Conecuh, Coosa, Covington, Crenshaw, Cullman, Dale, Dallas, DeKalb, Elmore, Etowah, Fayette, Geneva, Greene, Hale, Henry, Houston, Jackson, Jefferson, Lamar, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Lee, Limestone, Lowndes, Macon, Madison, Marengo, Marion, Marshall, Montgomery, Morgan, Monroe, Perry, Pickens, Pike, Randolph, Russell, Shelby, St. Clair, Sumter, Talladega, Tallapoosa, Tuscaloosa, Walker, Wilcox, and Winston.
For more information, visit the Company's corporate Web site: www.alacare.com.
