Heritage Green Assisted Living's Dedication To Continuous Quality Improvement Earns National Recognition

August 2008. Lynchburg, VA - Heritage Green Assisted Living is one of three hundred and twelve long term care facilities across the nation that have earned the American Health Care Association and the National Center For Assisted Living's (AHCA/NCAL) Quality Award for demonstrating a strong commitment to continuous quality improvement.

"The AHCA/NCAL Quality Awards - comprised of three levels, a Step I award; a more rigorous Step II award; and a comprehensive Step III award - are the most prestigious recognition of quality within the long term care profession," stated AHCA/NCAL President and CEO, Bruce Yarwood. "Heritage Green Assisted Living's Step I award shows their dedicated frontline caregivers, administrators, nurses and physicians are demonstrating their commitment to quality of care and meeting the needs for our nation's most vulnerable population.

As a Step I recipient, Heritage Green Assisted Living demonstrated its organization wide commitment to a customer-focused facility mission, defined its principal customers and their expectations, and indicated ways that it is striving to meet their needs.

"The Quality Award program has retained many of the features that makes it an independently judged, criteria-based, award program relying extensively on approximately 100 volunteer trained examiners," added Bernie Dana, Chair of The Quality Award Board of Overseers. "This quality award program continues to be a valuable framework and tool to facilities that are developing a systems-based perspective to achieve performance excellence."

AHCA/NCAL's Quality Award is modeled after the criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation's premier award recognizing distinguished achievements. AHCA/NCAL's award is designed to support both continuous quality improvement efforts in long term care by promoting quality awareness and education and to recognize quality achievements.

Heritage Green Assisted Living will be honored for their achievement and presented with their award during AHCA/NCAL's 59th Annual Convention and Exposition, October 5-8, 2008 in Nashville, TN. The awards are sponsored by McKesson Medical-Surgical, a leading distributor of medical supplies and equipment to physician practices, surgery centers, hospitals, home care, and extended care facilities, and they are a valued AHCA/NCAL Associate Business Member and My InnerView, a Web-based applied research and quality-management company that supports leaders across the entire assisted living, senior housing and skilled nursing profession with tools to measure, benchmark and improve performance.