Medical professionals from more than 110 care centers nationwide gathered last week for a luncheon at the North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference (NACFC) in Orlando, Fla. Members of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's leadership team updated care center staff on progress being made in CF research and care and thanked attendees for their dedication to the CF cause.

This year, four care centers received a 2011 - 2012 Quality Care Award, which honors care centers that have continuously demonstrated a commitment to improving the quality of CF care, leading to better health outcomes for people with CF:

• Children's Hospital at Oakland
• Medical University of South Carolina
• Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas & University of Texas Southwestern, Austin
• University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler

“It is an honor and privilege to recognize this year's awardees for their outstanding work and dedication to improving CF care,” said Bruce C. Marshall, M.D., vice president of clinical affairs at the CF Foundation. “We are deeply grateful to care center teams across the country for your contributions to the progress we are seeing today that will ultimately change the face of this disease.”

Foundation-accredited care centers provide expert CF care for the thousands of people living with the disease. The centers also participate in CF clinical research and work to educate healthcare professionals about the disease and the care people living with CF require.

“We're fortunate to have such amazing partners in our care centers who live and breathe our CF mission and work tirelessly to improve the quality of life for those living with CF,” said Robert J. Beall, Ph.D., president and CEO of the CF Foundation.

About the Awards

The Foundation instituted the Quality Care Awards in 2008. Recipients of this year's awards were chosen by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Center Committee from care centers that were visited during fall 2011 and spring 2012. Centers that received the honor excelled at meeting the following quality improvement performance standards:

• Actively uses clinical outcomes data to identify opportunities for improvement and documents the results of improvement efforts;
• Aligns improvement efforts to result in measurable improvement in important clinical outcomes;
• Consistently and actively involves patients and families in identifying, designing and/or implementing improvement efforts;
• Employs innovative strategies to improve care processes and outcomes; and
• Implements system changes that result in high reliability of care processes.