Skip to Content
/ Articles / Health & Wellness /

Berks Community Health Center Achieves Perfect Score During HRSA Visit

Sep 25, 2018 • by Berks Community Health Center

Operational Site Visit Covered 18 Required Areas in Quality and Compliance for Federally-Qualified Community Health Centers

Berks Community Health Center is pleased to announce that it successfully met 100% of all Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requirements with no conditions for correction during a recent Operational Site Visit (OSV) conducted by surveyors from HHS’s  Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA), Bureau of Primary Health Care.  This accomplishment places BCHC among a very small number of Federally-Qualified Health Centers nationally to achieve unconditional approval during the OSV.  OSVs are conducted by HRSA every two to three years at community health centers to provide a comprehensive assessment of compliance, quality and service delivery.

BCHC was evaluated on 18 requirements (encompassing 91 separate criteria) that cover Clinical; Governance/Administration; and Financemeasures during the in-depth review.  Areas the surveyors cited as especially noteworthy included:

Strength in assessing the health care needs of the community in concert with other community and health care organizations;Clinical effort to reduce chronic disease such as diabetes rates and the care coordination currently being conducted by the nursing staff.Numerous collaborations with other community organizations;Thorough and efficient credentialing of providers;Effective outreach to patients regarding the health center’s Sliding Fee Discount Program, which ensures inability to pay is not a barrier to receiving care.

“The operational site visit is an important tool to ensure that our patients not only have access to care, but that the care we provide is the highest quality,” said BCHC CEO Mary Kargbo.   “Our surveyors and program officer indicated that an operational site visit with no problems identified is rare.   I am so very proud of our entire staff and the leadership team at BCHC, because it is their hard work and commitment to quality every day that results in such a successful site visit.”

We need your support!

Your contribution makes community media possible.

A donation of any size to your nonprofit media organization supports the future of media access in our community - the things you love, and the places you care about, by the people you know.

Live Streaming