Five Vermont Agencies Named to HomeCare Elite
Five Vermont home care agencies have been named to the HomeCare Elite, a listing of the most successful home care agencies in the United States. Named to the list from Vermont are the Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice in Berlin (CVHHH); the VNA of Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties, based in Colchester; the Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice of Southwestern Vermont Home Care of Bennington; Manchester Health Services, and the Rutland Area VNA & Hospice.
We are extremely proud of this important recognition,” said Judy Peterson, CVHHH President and CEO. “This achievement is a reflection of our staff's hard work and our agency's dedication to the patients we serve.”
HomeCare Elite is the list of the top 25 percent of home care agencies based on three measurers - Quality of Care, Quality Improvement, and Financial Performance, according to Outcome Concept Systems (OCS). In its second year of publication, HomeCare Elite is a comprehensive set of measures spanning clinical outcomes, financial performance, resource utilization, patient satisfaction, and operational indicators for home care, hospice and private duty services.
To create the list of HomeCare Elite agencies, OCS used publicly available data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Each agency’s performance was compared against the performance of other organizations in its state and in the country. Scores for the three measures were combined into one overall score.
“We are ecstatic that we were named as a Homecare Elite top agency two years in a row,” says Ron Cioffi, Executive Director of RAVNAH. “It is a significant accomplishment that we have been able to maintain high quality service and positive financial indicators in a tough environment of decreased reimbursements and increased regulatory restraints.”
The 2007 HomeCare Elite also indicates providers who are included in the top 100 and top 500 agencies nationwide. On the top 500 list from Vermont are the VNA of Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties and the VNA & Hospice of Southwestern Vermont Health Care. There are over 7,000 Medicare-certified home care agencies in the country.
"Wow. Being named as one of the top performers in the country is a great honor. This shows that this agency is dedicated to quality,” said Julia Maroney, CEO of the Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice of Southwestern Vermont Health Care.
HomeCare Elite is the only performance recognition of its kind in the home health industry. The 2007 HomeCare Elite list is presented by OCS, a provider of healthcare information and data, and DecisionHealth, publisher of the independent newsletter Home Health. The entire list of the 2007 HomeCare Elite agencies can be viewed by visiting the OCS web site at: www.ocsys.com.
“We applaud the success of all the providers named to the 2007 HomeCare Elite,” said Bill Bassett, Senior Director of Market Strategy at OCS, Inc. “Being noted as one of the top performers in the nation in this very competitive environment shows that these Vermont agencies are dedicated to quality and performance.”
"Making the 2007 HomeCare Elite is commendable in today’s highly competitive home health care industry," said Jonathan Stern, Group Publisher of DecisionHealth’s Home Health Group.