Heywood Hospital Is Recognized As A Community Value Five-star® Hospital By Cleverley + Associates

Aug. 2, 2012 - PRLog -- Gardner, MA -- Heywood Hospital was recently recognized as a top-ranked Community Value Provider by Cleverley + Associates (Columbus, OH). Cleverley + Associates, a leading healthcare financial consulting firm specializing in operational benchmarking and performance enhancement strategies, released the findings as part of its new publication: State of the Hospital Industry - 2012 Edition.

“We are very pleased to be recognized by Cleverley for providing a high level of value to our community,” said President & CEO of Heywood Hospital, Winfield S. Brown, FACHE. “Offering the best care at the most reasonable cost is especially important in light of our evolving healthcare environment where accountable-care and payment for quality are becoming the norm. Being designated a Five-star® Hospital shows that we are continuing to move in the right direction, putting quality care and community first, ultimately providing quantifiable value to the north central region of Massachusetts.”

Written by William O. Cleverley, Ph.D., a noted expert in healthcare finance, the State of the Hospital Industry reports selected measures of hospital financial performance and discusses the critical factors that lie behind them. The publication focuses on the US acute-care hospital industry over a three-year time period (2008-2010). For the ninth year, the 2012 State of the Hospital Industry reports an exclusive measure developed by Cleverley + Associates: the Community Value Index® (CVI). The CVI is a proprietary index created to offer a measure of the value that a hospital provides to its community. The book outlines the data used to calculate the CVI as well as provides a list of the Top 100 and all Five-Star (top quintile) hospitals. “The topic of hospital value is increasingly being discussed. Issues of pricing and community benefit have been well-publicized but little has been offered to measure the broad scope of value,” adds James Cleverley, co-author. “In response, the Community Value Index® was created to provide an assessment of a hospital’s performance in four areas: financial strength and reinvestment, cost of care, pricing, and quality. Fundamentally, the CVI suggests that a hospital provides value to the community when it is financially viable, is appropriately reinvesting back into the facility, maintains a low cost structure, has reasonable charges, and provides high quality care to patients.”

About Cleverley + Associates
Cleverley + Associates is a Columbus, Ohio-based healthcare data and consulting services firm specializing in custom data analyses and reporting for healthcare providers, consultants, and vendors. The company’s primary focus is to provide healthcare providers with solutions and recommendations that will enhance their financial performance through better pricing decisions; improved coding, capital restructuring, cost and productivity enhancements; and/or investment management changes. For more information, call Cleverley + Associates at 888-779-5663 or visit http://www.cleverleyassociates.com.

About Heywood Hospital
http://www.heywood.org
Heywood Hospital is an independent, community-owned, non-profit 153-bed acute-care hospital located in Gardner, MA. Heywood Hospital provides a broad range of high quality medical, surgical, obstetrical, pediatric and behavioral health services on an inpatient and outpatient basis. Our Centers of Excellence include the Watkins Center for Emergency and Acute Care; the LaChance Maternity Center, the Diabetes Center; and the Heywood Heart Center, an affiliate of the Heart and Vascular Center of Excellence at UMass Memorial Health Care. Heywood’s nationally recognized Transitional Care Center was recently ranked among the best long-term and rehabilitation centers in the nation by US News and World Report. In addition to the main campus, Heywood Hospital has two satellite facilities, the Winchendon Health Center in Winchendon and the Heywood Rehab Center in Gardner, as well as a number of primary care practices in the region. Heywood Hospital also operates a school-based health center, the Murdock Health Center at the Murdock Middle High School in Winchendon.