The Joint Commission Recognizes Bronson’s Commitment to Quality and Safety

April 30, 2008

Bronson has earned The Joint Commission's Gold Seal of Approval™ for Bronson Methodist Hospital, the Bronson Medical Practices, and Bronson Home Health Care. These three entities have demonstrated compliance with national standards for healthcare quality and safety and performed better than their national counterparts.

Founded in 1951, The Joint Commission is dedicated to continuously improving the safety and quality of the nation's healthcare by surveying and accrediting deserving hospitals. Bronson‘s survey was conducted late in 2007 and included inpatient and outpatient services, as well as physician practices and home healthcare. The surveyors noted the following strengths:

• Patient Flow -- How fast patients seen in the Emergency Department are admitted to the inpatient units
• Medication Safety – Bronson is one of the few hospitals in the country where pharmacy technicians in the Emergency Department ask patients what medicines they are taking and follow up with doctors’ offices and pharmacies to make sure the list is accurate. This helps reduce the likelihood of medication errors.
• Facility Design – Private rooms to reduce the chance of infection and well-maintained buildings
• Culture – The culture of quality and safety is ingrained in Bronson’s staff. The organization is continually raising the bar and challenging itself to have even better processes and results.
• People – The surveyors were impressed with how committed Bronson’s doctors, nurses and staff are to providing excellent care and said it was obvious that Bronson’s staff is involved in the process and loves what they do.

"Above all, the national standards are intended to stimulate continuous, systematic and organization-wide improvement in an organization's performance and the outcomes of care," says Darlene Christiansen, executive director, Hospital Accreditation Program, Joint Commission. "The community should be proud that Bronson Methodist Hospital is focusing on the most challenging goal -- to continuously raise quality and safety to higher levels."

According to Cheryl Knapp, Bronson vice president of quality and safety, “This accreditation is proof of our organization-wide commitment to providing consistently high quality care to patients and families in this region. Bronson’s employees and medical staff are wholly committed to leading the nation in these efforts and have been acknowledged by many national healthcare organizations for achieving best practice performance.”

About Bronson Methodist Hospital

Bronson Methodist Hospital, located at 601 John St. in downtown Kalamazoo, Mich., is the flagship of Bronson Healthcare Group, a not-for-profit healthcare system serving all of southwest Michigan and northern Indiana. With 380 licensed beds and all private rooms, Bronson Methodist Hospital provides care in virtually every specialty—cardiology, orthopedics, surgery, emergency medicine, neurology, oncology—with advanced capabilities in critical care as a Level I Trauma Center; in neurological care as a Joint Commission certified Primary Stroke Center; in cardiac care as the region’s first accredited Chest Pain Emergency Center; in obstetrics as the leading BirthPlace and only high-risk pregnancy center in southwest Michigan, and in pediatrics as one of only four children's hospitals in the state. The hospital is the recipient of the 2005 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation's highest presidential honor for quality and organizational performance excellence, and was named one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals for 2005 by Solucient.

Bronson Healthcare Group is one of Kalamazoo’s largest employers and has been ranked for five consecutive years by Working Mother magazine as one of the nation’s 100 best companies to work for. Annually, Bronson provides more than $37 million in community benefits through outreach and charitable care for the un- and under-insured. Bronson also serves the largest percentage of Medicaid patients of any Michigan hospital outside of southeast Michigan.

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