Berks Community Health Center Achieves Five Quality Badges from HRSA

The Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recently awarded five 2021 Community Health Quality Recognition (CHQR) badges to Berks Community Health Center (BCHC). According to HRSA, the CHQR badges recognize recipients of the health center program who have made notable achievements in the areas of access, quality, health equity, information technology on the health, social risk factor screening and COVID-19 public health emergency response using the Uniform Data System (UDS) data from the most recent reporting period.

“We are honored to have been awarded five badges that demonstrate our commitment to providing quality care to our community,” said Mary Kargbo, President and CEO of Berks Community Health Center. “We are fortunate to have a team of committed and qualified staff who are focused on our mission to provide exceptional patient-centered primary and preventative health care to all residents of Berks County, regardless of economic status. .”

The badges obtained by BCHC were in recognition of specific quality measures encountered during the 2021 reporting period:

• Health Center Quality Leaders Silver Badgewhich recognizes the top 21-30% of FQHCs that achieve the best overall performance in clinical quality measurement.
• The Advancing Health Information Technology (HIT) badge for qualitywhich recognizes FQHCs 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 the quality of care.
• The Access Enhancer Badgerecognizing an increase of at least 5% in the total number of patients served and the number of patients who receive at least one comprehensive service (mental health, addictions, vision, dental care and/or habilitation).
• The Health Disparities Reducer Badge, demonstrating improvements in some LCQs over consecutive UDS reporting years (UDS 2020 and 2021) for at least one racial/ethnic group; or meets established benchmarks for all racial/ethnic groups served in the last UDS reporting year.
• Patient Centered Medical House (PCMH) Badgewhich recognizes that the four BCHC sites meet the standards to be designated PCMH.

Kargbo commented, “As we have been celebrating community service for a decade now, I am very proud of the progress we have made. We strive for excellence in everything we do and earning these distinctions proves it.