Berkshire Medical Center Receives Patient Safety Excellence Award

PITTSFIELD — Berkshire Medical Center announced that, for the second year in a row, it is a recipient of the Healthgrades Patient Safety Excellence Award, a designation that recognizes superior performance of hospitals that have prevented the occurrence of serious, potentially avoidable complications for patients during hospital stays. The 2018 distinction places BMC among the top 10{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} of all short-term acute-care hospitals reporting patient-safety data as evaluated by Healthgrades, the leading online resource for comprehensive information about physicians and hospitals. 

This is the second time in less than a month that BMC’s Patient Safety record has been recognized by a national organization that analyzes and rates hospitals across the nation for safety. In April, the Leapfrog Group rated BMC with another ‘A’ grade for patient safety, placing it among only 49 hospitals in the nation to have achieved straight ‘A’ grades since the inception of Leapfrog’s patient-safety grading system in 2012.

“The physicians, nurses, and staff of Berkshire Medical Center work together as a team to achieve excellence in patient safety and outstanding clinical care,” said David Phelps, president and CEO of Berkshire Health Systems. “Every member of our care team should be proud of this ongoing validation of the high level of care they provide our community.”

If all hospitals achieved the average performance of award recipients for each of the 13 patient-safety indicators evaluated during the 2014 to 2016 study period, 126,342 patient-safety events could have been avoided, according to Healthgrades.