Texas Children’s Heart Center recently was re-certified as a Center of Excellence for Optum Health, a health services and innovation company that collaborates with its credentialed network providers to provide mutually beneficial services to patients across the globe.
Since 2015, the Heart Center has met or exceeded rigorous quality standards and performance measures consistently set by Optum’s Congenital Heart Defect program. The Center of Excellence designation provides access to the Heart Center for prospective patients and helps patients identify programs that provide the best in class care for their unique needs.
“This designation allows us to reach the patients and families who really need us,” said Texas Children’s Executive Vice President John Nickens. “It also further confirms our ability and expertise in the area of congenital heart defects, which are relatively rare and require high-level treatment from talented cardiologists and cardiovascular surgeons.”
According to Optum very few facilities capture enough volume to develop the expertise and experience required to consistently deliver superior outcomes. Out of the medical centers Optum surveys, only 25 have sufficient volume and experience to meet the company’s clinical qualification criteria. Texas Children’s heart program is one of those and also was ranked the No. 2 pediatric hospital in the nation for cardiology and heart surgery in U.S. News & World Report’s 2016-17 rankings.