2025-03-25
TecSalud earns PANCCO IBD Center of Excellence — first in Mexico
Hospital Zambrano Hellion certified by the Pan-American Crohn and Colitis Organization. A note on what it took, and what I contributed to.
The milestone
On February 19, 2025, the Hospital Zambrano Hellion of TecSalud received the PANCCO Center of Excellence certification in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) in Berlin, during the 20th Congress of the European Organization of Crohn and Colitis (ECCO). It is the first hospital in Mexico to hold this international distinction.
The certification is valid through January 2028.
What PANCCO is
PANCCO — the Pan-American Organization of Crohn and Colitis — sets consensus standards for IBD care across the Americas and certifies hospitals that meet them as Centers of Excellence.
What the audit looked like
The audit was conducted by Bureau Veritas in January 2025 and evaluated 52 key parameters, including:
- Imaging and endoscopy infrastructure
- Operating rooms and infusion centers
- Emergency and outpatient consult areas
- Pathology and clinical research capability
- Multidisciplinary team integration
- International physician visits and innovative therapy advancement
- Patient outcomes — including IBD-specific mortality
The standout metric
"Evaluaron un parámetro importante que es la mortalidad en pacientes con EII y nosotros en los últimos cinco años no tuvimos un solo fallecimiento." — Dr. Manuel Martínez Vázquez, IBD Clinic Leader, Institute of Digestive Health
Zero IBD patient deaths over the prior five years. That is the number the auditors marked.
The team
- Dr. Francisco Bosques Padilla — Director, Institute of Digestive Health
- Dr. Manuel Martínez Vázquez — Gastroenterology, leader of the IBD Clinic
- Internal Medicine Service Line — Hospital Zambrano Hellion · administrative and operational support to the certification effort
"Hemos desarrollado una práctica de alto nivel conformada por un equipo multidisciplinario sólido." — Dr. Francisco Bosques Padilla
My contribution
I worked as Internal Medicine Service Line Hospitalist at Hospital Zambrano Hellion during the certification cycle. The PANCCO review was multidisciplinary by design, and my role sat on the administrative and operational side of that work — not on the clinical care of IBD patients, which is led by the Institute of Digestive Health.
What that looked like in practice:
- Administrative management within the Internal Medicine Service Line — process consistency, documentation completeness, and audit-ready operational substrate.
- Data collection and reporting against clinical, operational, and quality indicators relevant to the certification.
- Close communication with the Institute of Digestive Health team at Hospital Zambrano Hellion on the PANCCO certification — alignment, milestones, and information requested by the auditors.
- Operational support during the Bureau Veritas review across the 52 evaluated parameters.
The certification belongs to a whole institution and to the IBD sub-specialty team that built the program over years. My piece sat in the management and certification-direction layer that surrounds that specialty work — the part of the operation that has to be quiet, organized, and well-coordinated for an audit like PANCCO to land.
Source
Conecta Tec — "Certifican de excelencia a TecSalud en manejo de Enfermedad Intestinal" · Fernando Zamora · March 25, 2025.