Lehigh Valley Health Network

Community benefits top $400M

For the first time ever, Lehigh Valley Health Network’s (LVHN) community benefit totaled more than $400 million in fiscal year 2015, with a total of $401.6 million from July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2015.

The total includes investments in care such as screenings, health education and research, community partnerships, uncompensated charity care/care for people who are uninsured or underinsured and the difference between government subsidies for care and the actual cost of providing that care.

The information was part of the health network’s annual report at its community annual meeting held recently at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.

St. Luke’s Health Network

Network honored by OCS HomeCare

St. Luke’s Home Health has been recognized, for the seventh time, as one of the nation’s HomeCare Elite Top Agencies by OCS HomeCare, a national research organization.

The agency uses publicly available data regarding quality of care, quality improvement and consistency, patient experience, process measure implementation and financial performance to create the list.

The quality improvement index is based on changes in the nine outcomes released in July 2014 and July 2015. The quality consistency score represents performance relative to the state norm in the quality measures over the past five years. The financial performance measure is based on Medicare profit margin for freestanding agencies from the 2014 CMS Cost Reports or from 2013, adjusted, when 2014 data was not available.