Berkshire Visiting Nurse Assoc. Named a Top Agency

PITTSFIELD — The Berkshire Visiting Nurse Assoc. has been named a Top Agency of the 2012 HomeCare Elite, a compilation of the top-performing home health agencies in the U.S. Now in its seventh year, the HomeCare Elite identifies the top 25{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} of Medicare-certified agencies and further highlights the top 100 and top 500 agencies overall.

Winners are ranked by an analysis of publicly available performance measures in quality outcomes, process-measure implementation, patient experience (Home Health CAHPS), quality improvement, and financial performance. The Berkshire VNA, part of Berkshire Health Systems, provides comprehensive home health services throughout Berkshire County and the surrounding region.

“The 2012 HomeCare Elite winners demonstrate a commitment to providing patient-centered care and serving as leaders in the home health community. Their success offers data-driven proof of being well-managed and high-quality care providers to hospitals, managed-care organizations, ACOs, and other potential referral partners across the healthcare continuum,” said Susan Henricks, president and COO of National Research Corp., the parent company of OCS HomeCare. “Again, this year, we updated our methodology to reflect the rapidly evolving, quality-focused healthcare landscape and national value-based purchasing trends. We congratulate Berkshire Visiting Nurse Assoc. on being recognized as a top home-care agency.”

According to Marci Heydt, product manager for the post-acute care business group of DecisionHealth, “HomeCare Elite recognition continues to gain importance given the increased regulatory mandates and the threat of shrinking reimbursement revenue. Home-health agencies that have earned recognition among the HomeCare Elite demonstrated that they not only can adapt to an evolving marketplace, but continue to excel in clinical, patient-experience, quality-improvement, and financial outcomes.”

The HomeCare Elite is the only performance recognition of its kind in the home-health profession. The 2012 HomeCare Elite is co-sponsored by National Research Corp., the leading provider of cross-continuum healthcare metrics and analytics, and DecisionHealth, publisher of the independent industry newsletter Home Health Line. The data used for this analysis were compiled from publicly available information.