BHS Hospitals Earn Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditations
PITTSFIELD — Berkshire Health Systems announced that all three of its hospitals have been awarded Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation (GEDA) by the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP).
Fairview Hospital was recently awarded renewed accreditation and has been accredited since 2022. North Adams Regional Hospital, which reopened in 2024 as a critical access hospital, received accreditation in late 2025. Berkshire Medical Center has been accredited since 2023. All three hospitals were awarded bronze-level accreditation for three years.
“Our emergency departments are often the front lines of care for our senior population, and this accreditation exemplifies our commitment to the highest level of care,” said Darlene Rodowicz, Berkshire Health Systems president and CEO. “The Berkshires has a significantly higher-than-average number of senior patients compared to much of the rest of the Commonwealth, and I applaud the providers in our emergency departments for their team-based approach to care that has led to these accreditations.”
The GEDA program is the culmination of years of progress in emergency care of older adults. In 2014, ACEP, along with the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, the Emergency Nurses Assoc., and the American Geriatrics Society, developed and released geriatric ED guidelines, recommending measures ranging from adding geriatric-friendly equipment to specialized staff to more routine screening for delirium, dementia, and fall risk, among other vulnerabilities.
The voluntary GEDA program, which includes three levels similar to trauma center designations, provides specific criteria and goals for emergency clinicians and administrators to target. The accreditation process provides more than two dozen best practices for geriatric care, and the level of GEDA accreditation achieved depends upon how many of these best practices an emergency department is able to meet. A level-3 emergency department must incorporate many of these best practices, along with providing interdisciplinary geriatric education, and have geriatric-appropriate equipment and supplies available.