Lehigh Regional Medical Center has been recognized with the HMA Silver Award during a Quality Conference hosted by its parent company, Naples-based Health Management Associates Inc. (HMA), in Plano, Texas on December 2, 2009.

This award honored Lehigh Regional Medical Center for its significant progress in maintaining its quality metrics and satisfaction ratings during 2009 as the 2nd most improved hospital within the family of over 55 hospitals owned and managed by HMA.

To be recognized with this award, the hospital must meet the criteria in the following categories:

Core Measures: monitored by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services (CMS) to make sure that hospitals are following the best practices for specific disease processes.

Quality Scores: HMA internal scoring system that measures daily practices of the staff and the processes that are implemented throughout the hospital.

Patient Satisfaction: measured by Press-Ganey and is reported to CMS as information for the public to have easy access to.

This is the second year in a row that LRMC wins this award.

“Out of the 55 deserving HMA hospitals nationwide, we once again came in second place with an award that requires an extraordinary amount of work and an attentive bond between physicians and hospital staff with the purpose of doing what is best for our patients,” Jos F. Morillo, Lehigh Regional Medical Center CEO said. To the staff of LRMC he added: “We have come a long way LRMC. You have great reasons to be proud.”