Williamstown Commons Receives National Award for Best Practices in Quality Care

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) recently selected Williamstown Commons Nursing & Rehabilitation Center as a recipient of the Silver Achievement in Quality award for its outstanding performance in the health care profession.

Williamstown Commons is one of only 128 facilities in the nation, and one of only four facilities in Massachusetts, selected to receive the silver award in 2015. More than 325 facilities across the nation applied for the 2015 silver award. The competitive award program highlights select centers across the nation that serve as models of excellence in providing high-quality long term care.

“We are proud to have received the Silver Award and we’re pleased that an independent panel of examiners saw the high value we place on quality care and service excellence,” said Michelle Chappell, administrator at Williamstown Commons, which is an affiliate of Berkshire Healthcare. “Our focus at Williamstown has always been on people. We want to continue to evolve our quality care and service to even greater heights.”

Implemented by AHCA/NCAL in 1996, the National Quality Award Program is centered on the core values and criteria of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. The program assists providers of long term and post-acute care services in achieving their performance excellence goals.


“I am proud that Williamstown Commons is standing among the ranks of other centers that are delivering quality care,” said Mark Parkinson, president and CEO of AHCA/NCAL. “Our profession is stronger through the work and dedication of these centers.”

The program has three levels: Bronze, Silver and Gold. Facilities begin the quality improvement process at the Bronze level and must receive an award at each level before proceeding to the next.

The award will be presented to Williamstown Commons during AHCA/NCAL’s 66th Annual Convention and Exposition, Oct. 4-7, 2015, in San Antonio, Texas.

Williamstown Commons, located at 25 Adams Road, Williamstown, is a nonprofit organization providing top quality, personalized short-term rehabilitation, long-term skilled nursing care, and respite care, all in a warm, homelike setting. Hospice services are available for compassionate end-of-life care.

 


Tags: BHS,   nursing home,   

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Williamstown Select Board Awards ARPA Funds to Remedy Hall

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday allocated $20,000 in COVID-19-era relief funds to help a non-profit born of the pandemic era that seeks to provide relief to residents in need.
 
On a unanimous vote, the board voted to grant the American Rescue Plan Act money to support Remedy Hall, a resource center that provides "basic life necessities" and emotional support to "individuals and families experiencing great hardship."
 
The board of the non-profit approached the Select Board with a request for $12,000 in ARPA Funds to help cover some of the relief agency's startup costs, including the purchase of a vehicle to pick up donations and deliver items to clients, storage rental space and insurance.
 
The board estimates that the cost of operating Remedy Hall in its second year — including some one-time expenses — at just north of $31,500. But as board members explained on Monday night, some sources of funding are not available to Remedy Hall now but will be in the future.
 
"With the [Williamstown] Community Chest, you have to be in existence four or five years before you can qualify for funding," Carolyn Greene told the Select Board. "The same goes for state agencies that would typically be the ones to fund social service agencies.
 
"ARPA made sense because [Remedy Hall] is very much post-COVID in terms of the needs of the town becoming more evident."
 
In a seven-page letter to the town requesting the funds, the Remedy Hall board wrote that, "need is ubiquitous and we are unveiling that truth daily."
 
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