Deadline Nears For HCC Nursing Program Signups

HOLYOKE — Holyoke Community College’s Division of Continuing Education, the Division of Health, Education, and Technology, and the Nursing Department have teamed up to provide an evening program in licensed practical nursing. The deadline for applications for this program is Dec. 1.
Applicants to the new evening program must have passed Human Biology, Psychology, and Human Development.
For more information on the evening program or to begin the application process, call (413) 552-2600, ext. 3132, or visit lprn@hcc.mass.edu.

SPRINGFIELD — Baystate Medical Center (BMC) recently announced that it has joined more than 100 other hospital organizations across the country to participate in a voluntary demonstration project designed to improve the quality of inpatient care.

Baystate is the only Massachusetts hospital participating in the three-year demonstration project being conducted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Premier Inc., an alliance of nearly 1,500 not-for-profit hospitals that provides an array of resources supporting health care quality initiatives.

Baystate will work with CMS to help validate quality measures and test a pay-for-performance program that may lead to improved payments for hospitals with high quality of care.
BMC will track performance on quality measures involving specific clinical conditions: heart bypass surgery, heart failure care, heart attack care, community-acquired pneumonia, and hip and knee replacement.

“We had several reasons for participation in this project, one being that the measures being used for this demonstration project are evidence-based quality measures that, when improved upon, benefit our patients directly,” said Evan Benjamin, M.D., vice president of Health Care Quality for Baystate Health System. “This also puts BMC at the table to shape future health care policy in terms of quality measurement and reimbursement systems.

“Baystate will be eligible for increased Medicare payments for delivering high quality care as well as identifying new ways to continuously improve the care provided to patients with specific clinical conditions,” he continued. “Voluntary participation in this project will continue to challenge us as a health care provider to improve the quality of care we deliver, and the new standards of practice we put in place may someday become national standards for all hospitals to adhere to.”

Earlier this year, Baystate was named a “Distinguished Performer” in the Premier Award for Quality program, a national award sponsored by Premier Inc. in recognition of the advances Baystate has made in health care quality and patient safety.