Achievement Awards Spotlight: Temple Health

August 02, 2024

HAP's annual Achievement Awards honor hospitals and health systems for their innovation, creativity, and commitment to patient care. The Achievement Awards showcase and share member hospitals’ and health systems’ successful programs and best practices.

This year, Temple Health received the Excellence in Care award for its Advancing Colorectal Cancer Equity through Systematic Screening (ACCESS) initiative.

Here’s what you need to know:

• The challenge:   Early colorectal cancer (CRC) screening is critical to early diagnosis and treatment, but barriers can prevent timely access to care.
  • Access to a primary care doctor, lack of health literacy, mistrust in the system, comorbid conditions, and limited providers are among the challenges that prevent patients from underrepresented populations from receiving screening.
• Addressing disparities:  Mortality for colorectal cancer has steadily declined for white Americans, but there has been significantly less success in lowering rates in other underrepresented populations.
• Taking action:  The system implemented the new ACCESS program to promote easier access to screening and diagnosis—in the hospital and in community settings.
  • The process included collaboration with five health system high volume ambulatory specialty care clinics and multiple community settings (churches and hospital-run community health fairs) to distribute testing kits and additional screening opportunities for hospitalized patients.
  • The program also has extensive follow up with patients, new educational content, and a dedicated team focused on coordinating care.
• Results:  The hospital saw clear results, significantly increasing the number of marginalized patients accessing screening and benefiting from early detection.
• Addressing barriers:  “In the current system, patients need to establish primary care in order to obtain the order for CRC screening, an arbitrary requirement that poses a major barrier to access,” the team noted.

Congratulations to Temple Health for its outstanding efforts to promote equity and advance care. Learn more about the project online.

Questions about the HAP Achievement Awards may be directed to HAP Member Services at (717) 561-5359.