Healthy Connections, Inc. is being recognized for its quality improvements during the past year.
Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has named Healthy Connections a recipient of five of its Community Health Quality Recognition (CHQR) awards. These awards are presented for showing notable quality improvement in areas of access, quality, health equity, and health information technology. In addition, Covid-19 awards were also introduced to recognize health centers’ contributions to the public health emergency response.
Healthy Connections was recognized as:
- Access Enhancer. Health Centers that increase the total number of patients they serve and the number of patients who receive at least one comprehensive service (mental health, substance abuse, vision, dental, and/or enabling) by at least 5 percent.
- Health Disparities Reducer. Health Centers that meet or exceed Healthy People (HP) goals in the areas of low birth weight, hypertension, or uncontrolled diabetes for at least one racial/ethnic minority group, and demonstrate at least a 10 percent improvement in areas of low birth weight, hypertension, or uncontrolled diabetes for at least one racial/ethnic group.
- Advancing HIT for Quality. Recognizes Health Centers that meet all criteria to optimize HIT services that advance telehealth, patient engagement, interoperability, and collection of social determinants of health to increase access to care and advance quality of care.
- Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH). Recognizes health centers with PCHM recognition in one or more delivery sites.
- Covid-19 Testing. Recognizes health centers that tested more than 50 percent of their 2020 reported UDS patient populations from April 10, 2020, to July 2, 2021, and have a response rate of at least 50 percent to the weekly Health Center Covid-19 Survey.
Healthy Connections is a Mena-based Community Health Network with locations throughout southwest and central Arkansas. Since its founding as a home-visiting program in 1998, Healthy Connections has been able to provide much-needed health, dental, behavioral health, and social services to families of every lifestyle. Services include primary care/family medicine, specialty services including cardiology, podiatry, and women’s health, My Kids Pediatric Clinic, Evolve Behavioral Health Services and Medication Management, Health For Life Clinic, Healthy Families Arkansas Polk, and Garland counties, and more.
Learn more about Healthy Connections at www.healthy-connections.org.