Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center Earns National Recognition for Patient-Centered Care

NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home™ standards emphasize enhanced care through patient-clinician partnership

WASHINGTON, DC—The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) announces that the Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center based in Worcester, Massachusetts has received NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Recognition (Level III status) for using evidence-based, patient-centered processes that focus on highly coordinated care and long‐term, participative relationships.

The NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home is a model of primary care that combines teamwork and information technology to improve care, improve patients’ experience of care and reduce costs. Medical homes foster ongoing partnerships between patients and their personal clinicians, instead of approaching care as the sum of episodic office visits. Each patient’s care is overseen by clinician-led care teams that coordinate treatment across the health care system. Research shows that medical homes can lead to higher quality and lower costs, and can improve patient and provider reported experiences of care.

“NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home Recognition raises the bar in defining high-quality care by emphasizing access, health information technology and coordinated care focused on patients,” said NCQA President Margaret E. O’Kane. “Recognition shows that Kennedy CHC has the tools, systems and resources to provide its patients with the right care, at the right time.”

To earn recognition, which is valid for three years, Kennedy CHC demonstrated the ability to meet the program’s key elements, embodying characteristics of the medical home. NCQA standards aligned with the joint principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home established with the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Osteopathic Association.

To find clinicians and their practices with NCQA PCMH Recognition, visit https://recognition.ncqa.org.

About NCQA
NCQA is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations. It also recognizes clinicians and practices in key areas of performance. NCQA’s Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®) is the most widely used performance measurement tool in health care. NCQA’s Web site (ncqa.org) contains information to help consumers, employers and others make more informed health care choices.
About Kennedy CHC
The mission of Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center (Kennedy CHC) is to “help people live healthier lives.”   We believe that everyone has a right to accessible, high quality, comprehensive, integrated and compassionate health care. As a community health center, Kennedy CHC has always provided comprehensive care to its patients, who are at disparate risk for chronic disease and poor health outcomes. Our vision is to be a constantly growing, financially sound, Federally Qualified Community Health Center that:
 – Efficiently delivers high quality, accessible primary care services.
– Becomes the health care home and provider choice of all our patients.
– Achieves excellence in outcomes with our patients as partners.
– Remains at the forefront of innovative health care practices.
Founded in a Worcester housing project as the Great Brook Valley Health Center in 1972, today Kennedy CHC has three medical facilities, four dental sites and six school-based clinics serving residents of Worcester, Framingham, Clinton, Milford, and the surrounding communities of MetroWest and Central Massachusetts. Currently over 28,000 patients of all ages receive care and service through Kennedy CHC’s medical home model of care which provides a comprehensive approach to primary care, urgent care, medical specialties, nutrition counseling, dental, optometry, pharmacy, behavioral health, social services, health education and youth development programs.