News

Awards and Accreditations

BMC Earns National Quality Awards
November 4, 2011 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Berkshire Medical Center earns Top Performer Status in National Medicare/Premier Healthcare Alliance Project PITTSFIELD, MA – Adding to its national recognition for quality care from organizations like HealthGrades®, the American Heart Association and other national organizations, Berkshire Medical Center has again been named a top performer in a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)/Premier healthcare alliance project that rewards hospitals for delivering high quality care. BMC is one of 216 hospitals in the US to participate in the sixth year of the pilot program with CMS and Premier, known as the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) project. BMC has participated in all six years to date, and this year received awards for Top Performer and Attainment in Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI), Heart Failure and the Surgical Care Improvement Project and Attainment in the treatment of Pneumonia. BMC consistently participates in national quality measurement programs such as HQID, which is a voluntary program for US hospitals. Over the course of the first six years of the project, BMC has received 26 overall awards, including nine for AMI, five for Heart Failure, four for the Surgical Care Improvement Project, six for Pneumonia and two for Hip and Knee Replacement. “Providing outstanding service to our community continues to be our primary mission,” said Diane Kelly, RN, Chief Operating Officer of BMC. “Our successes in this project are a testament to our ongoing efforts to improve the quality of care we offer our patients.” “This high level of quality care was achieved through the dedication of our entire staff,” said David Phelps, President and CEO of Berkshire Health Systems. “Berkshire Medical Center participates in programs like the HQID so that our community can be confident, through objective review, that we provide exceptional care and our patients can be confident they are receiving the best care right here at home.” “HQID tests the impact of economic incentives on quality,” said Susan DeVore, president and CEO of Premier, a healthcare quality and cost improvement alliance of more than 2,500 U.S. hospitals and 77,000-plus other healthcare sites. “Supporting the Affordable Care Act, HQID members will now have six years of experience in using a value-based purchasing model.” About the HQID project HQID is the first national project of its kind, designed to determine if economic incentives to hospitals are effective at improving the quality of inpatient care. In the project’s sixth year, Premier collected a set of more than 30 evidence-based clinical quality measures from 216 hospitals across the country. The quality measures were developed by government and private organizations (for more information on the indicators, visit www.qualitydemo.com). HQID tracks process and outcome measures in six clinical areas: acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure, coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), pneumonia, hip and knee replacement, and Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP). Improvements in quality of care saved an estimated 8,500 acute myocardial infarction (AMI/heart attack) patients in six years, according to a Premier analysis of mortality rates at participating hospitals. The nearly 3 million patients treated in the six clinical areas at the participating hospitals also received approximately 962,540 additional evidence-based clinical measures, such as the proper administration of aspirin, beta blockers and antibiotics.