From left to right, Katherine Costantini, Melissa Welsh, Jennifer Cohen, MD, spearheaded an initiative at Chester County Hospital to improve postpartum outcomes and decrease health care disparities in the Hispanic community.
PHILADELPHIA – Three Penn Medicine hospitals were honored among their peers with 2024 Achievement Awards from The Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania (HAP).
Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health (LG Health), Pennsylvania Hospital (PAH), and Chester County Hospital (CCH) were three of 13 hospitals across the state recognized in the annual awards program. The awards recognize hospitals and health systems that are taking innovative approaches to strengthening safety and quality of care, enhancing operations and patients’ experience, and partnering with their communities to address public health needs
Lancaster General Health’s entry, One-Stop Shopping: Food Farmacy Program Pairs Nutrition Counseling with Access To Healthy Food, received the Living the Vision Award, HAP’s top honor, celebrating innovation and bold interventions that exemplify the vision of a healthy Pennsylvania. LG Health’s Food Farmacy program aims to improve health by providing education on nutrition-related knowledge, skills, and dietary habits to patients who may be experiencing food insecurity, or struggling to access enough or the right kind of food, to improve overall health and manage and prevent chronic diseases to live an active, healthy life.
Pennsylvania Hospital received the Workforce Innovators Award for their entry, Clinical Nurse Ambassadors: Innovative Peer Support Improving Well-being, Clinical Practice, and Retention Among the Nursing Community on Night Shift. Launched in December 2022, the Clinical Nurse 1 Ambassador Program helps ease the transition from the classroom to the bedside for new-to-practice nurses working on night shift. The Workforce Innovators recognition celebrates hospitals engaging the health care workforce through projects developed to attract, develop, and retain the best workforce.
Chester County Hospital received the Excellence In Care Award for their initiative Improving Postpartum Outcomes and Decreasing Health Care Disparities in Hispanic Patients. The Excellence in Care Award celebrates hospitals’ and health systems’ innovative approaches to improving the quality of care for patients and the community.
In total, there were 93 entries for this year’s Achievement Awards. The Living the Vision Award is selected from the entire pool of entries across all categories and size divisions.
Additional information about the awards program and detailed descriptions of the winning projects are available on the HAP website.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.