UF Health earned a new badge of excellence.
The UF Health Cancer Center was one of four honored on Monday as the state’s inaugural group of Cancer Centers of Excellence, according to the Florida Department of Health.
The yearlong process was the collective effort of multiple UF hospitals, which came together to create a roughly 800-page report.
Jon Graham, UF Health Cancer Center’s deputy director of clinical administration, and Thomas George, director of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Program, co-authored the application.
“There’s a ton of team players for the huge effort to pull together the application and provide the state the requested data to support the application,” George said.
Graham said John Armstrong, the Florida surgeon general, will come to Gainesville to present the award.
The hospitals earned the excellence recognition for providing the most patient-centered care in Florida.
“All four of those hospitals had to demonstrate excellence in patient care, research and the third component is education,” Graham said.
George said it is important for UF Health to be recognized as a Cancer Center of Excellence.
“The state set minimum requirements, and the joint committee made sure that the legislative requirements were met and took those and made them more robust,” George said.
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 3/25/2015 under the headline “State awards UF Health for cancer center”]
