Porchlight Wins Five-star Rating

LEE — Porchlight VNA/Home Care has been given top honors with a five-star rating by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS).

In announcing Porchlight as the only Western Mass. agency given elite status, CEO Holly Chaffee, RN, BSN, MSN, offered these words to her staff, “Each and every day, you show compassion and dedication to our patients and I thank you for getting us to the top. This award is a culmination of all of your hard work and you deserve it.”

Similar to hotel or restaurant ratings, agencies are given a score of one to five stars, with one being the lowest score and five being the highest ranking among peers. Most agencies nationwide received three or three and one-half star ratings. As a five star agency, Porchlight performed better than 99.1{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} of its peers and is the highest ranked agency in Western Mass.

The new star ratings were rolled out last week as the standard by which all Medicare-certified home health care companies nationwide will be ranked. Consumers will find the ratings useful when researching home care options. Star ratings can be found on the Medicare.gov website under “Home Health Compare” and other publications along with detailed information on the measures used to determine the ratings. Star ratings are a reflection of the quality of patient care, safety measures, and outcomes as determined by CMS standards. One such measured outcome is the improvement in a patient’s ability to perform activities of daily living, such as walking independently. A low rate of patient hospitalization or readmissions is also a key measure of performance for the CMS ratings.

Porchlight has also received HomeCare Elite Awards of Excellence from the independent, nationwide rankings of home health care providers by OCS HomeCare by National Research Corporation and Decision Health. The Mass. Department of Public Health has also awarded the agency several deficiency-free surveys recognizing distinguished service and standards of care.