In healthcare, Centers of Excellence are preferred places of care. They have best outcomes, the finest operational standings and the best patient care. In short, they offer patients the most services and deliver the best results.

One of the keys to developing a Center of Excellence is patient volume. The more patients with the same type of illness or requiring the same procedure, the better physicians and staff become at diagnosing and treating that illness or performing that procedure.

In addition to volume, a Center of Excellence must have:

• the proper number and type of specialty and subspecialty physicians working together as a team, not as separate groups.
• an experienced clinical support staff and technology that offer the physician diagnostic support.
• timely communication with primary care physicians. As the physicians responsible for the overall health of patients, primary care physicians need to be informed of a specialist's decisions and recommendations.
• a commitment to training and education. This includes working with medical students and allowing access to research and clinical studies.
• an evidence-based approach to care. This approach looks at outcomes, follows data, makes case presentations and changes the way the Center delivers care as the evidence indicates a need to do so.