HEALTHCARE News:ALBUQUERQUE — Nineteen home health agencies across New Mexico, including Los Alamos Visiting Nurse Services, were recognized for their commitment to improving performance and promoting patient-centered care.
The HealthInsight Quality Award Program promotes transparency in health care. Since 2004, the program has recognized nursing homes, hospitals, home health agencies and outpatient medical practices and clinics in Utah and Nevada.
This year, HealthInsight New Mexico and the New Mexico Association for Home & Hospice Care partnered to launch the program in New Mexico. The inaugural home health awards were presented at the New Mexico Association for Home & Hospice Care 45th Annual Conference in Albuquerque.
The award program recognizes outpatient practices through three levels: the Home Health Quality Award, the Certificate for Excellence in Quality Improvement, and the HHCAHPS Performance Recognition Certificate.
2017 Home Health Quality Award recipients:
- BAYADA Home Health Care – Albuquerque; and
- Socorro General Hospital Home Health Care – Socorro.
The Quality Award recognizes high-performing agencies that have ranked at or above the 85th percentile on the quality measures used by the Home Health Quality Reporting Program; they have no condition of participation-level deficiencies on their most recent Medicare certification survey; and they have completed a quality improvement project that targeted a quality measure and promoted one element of patient-centered care.
2017 Certificate for Excellence in Quality Improvement: Recipients:
- Accolade Home Care – Clovis
- BAYADA Home Health Care – Albuquerque
- Elite Home Health – Hobbs
- Encompass Home Health of New Mexico – Albuquerque
- Encompass Home Health of New Mexico – Carlsbad
- Harmony Home Health & Hospice – Albuquerque
- J & J Home Care – Artesia
- Kindred at Home – Albuquerque
- Socorro General Hospital Home Health Care – Socorro
The Excellence in Quality Improvement certificate recognizes agencies demonstrating improvement by decreasing the gap between their ranking from the previous year and the 100th percentile by at least 50 percent.
2017 Home Health Consumer Assessment of Health Care Providers and Systems (HHCAHPS) Recognition Certificate Recipients:
- Community Homecare – Clovis
- Elite Home Health – Hobbs
- Esperanza Home Health Care/Hospice – Buena Vista
- Frontier Medical Home Health – Roswell
- Golden Services Home Health & Hospice – Carlsbad
- Los Alamos Visiting Nurse Service, Inc. – Los Alamos
- MountainView Regional Home Health – Las Cruces
- Plains Regional Medical Center Home Health Care – Clovis
- Socorro General Hospital Home Health Care – Socorro
- Star Care Home Health – Hobbs
- TLC Home Health Care – Carlsbad
Agencies receiving the HHCAHPS Recognition Certificate have ranked in the top 25 percent nationally on HHCAHPS scores, which shows they are providing their patients with an excellence experience of home care.
“We are pleased to recognize these outstanding home health agencies that are working continually to improve health care quality and patient care for New Mexicans,” said Margy Wienbar, executive director of HealthInsight New Mexico. “Their commitment to excellence is evidenced by their achievement of this award and underscores home health’s critical role in delivery systems to allow people to recover in their homes from illness or injury.”
The HealthInsight Quality Award Program was launched in September 2004 to promote transparency in health care. According to the Institute of Medicine, transparency in health care is defined as a system that is “accountable to the public, works openly, makes results known, and builds trust through disclosure.” By using available quality data to identify high-performing providers and publicizing the results, HealthInsight aims to help providers improve health care and help patients become more active and informed participants in that care.
Quality of care measures come from data that are voluntarily reported by home health agencies across the nation. The national home health rankings used to select recipients are available at healthinsight.org.
HealthInsight is a nonprofit, community-based health care organization based in Salt Lake City, Utah, with offices in Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah and works to improve health and health care for patients and providers. The New Mexico Association for Home & Hospice Care serves its membership through advocacy, networking, education and communication by promoting success and best practices for home care, hospice and related home health support services. Its purpose is to strengthen the home and hospice care industry in New Mexico by representing approximately 150 home care and hospice agency members that provide hands-on care to New Mexico residents in their homes.
