Lourdes: Putting Patients and Their Welfare at the Center of Care
Patients first! Patient rights and well-being are defining principles of care at Lourdes. All staff members must have, and proceed on, a thorough understanding of privacy, responsibilities, and roles in patient care.
Lourdes' patient handbooks review these areas, including a statement of patients' rights—plus information on arrival, care, convenience and discharge:
- Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, Patient Handbook [263K PDF}
- Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County, Patient Handbook [258K PDF}
As a nonprofit, community institution, Lourdes prides itself as well on providing a full range of services for the neighborhoods and areas that it serves, including quality primary care as well as highly specialized care in accomplished services.
Our staff seeks to make each patient's stay as pleasant as possible. Our nursing staff in particular will team with patients and families, in the interest of the patient's overall welfare, comfort, healing and return to independence. Educating individuals to be the best they can in their ongoing self-care remains central to fully comprehensive treatment.
Health News and Information
Lourdes takes seriously its responsibility to educate, inform and alert the community on health-related matters. In addition to the enormous amount of education that takes place during care, Lourdes staff members also speak, appear, and advise in the community.
The health system's information program for patients and practitioners includes public-service announcements as well as its quarterly inserts in Physician Practice magazine and its consumer newsbriefs:
- HealthTalk Newsletter
Lourdes Health System's quarterly newsletter with articles on important health topics. - e-HealthTalk Archives
Archived issues of our free monthly email newsletter. - Sign-up to receive the newsletter.
Guarding Privacy and Confidentiality
Lourdes promotes the essential value of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This set of laws protects the privacy of individual health information, specifies individual rights in healthcare and sets up a system for filing a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights for health-information violations.
Reference sites for HIPAA:
Working with Payers
Lourdes also collaborates with and responds to insurers on quality and safety-related efforts. Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Humana and other third-party payers all have extensive programs in these areas. Patients and families can check with their medical insurance company for more information.
Lourdes Health System provides health services to all persons without regard to race, color, creed, age, sex, sexual preference, national origin or handicap. Lourdes is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
