Cambridge Health Alliance Honored

Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard-affiliated public healthcare system, was named to Harvard Pilgrim Health Care’s 2010 Pediatric Honor Roll on Nov. 23.

This is the fourth time the system, which serves Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston, received the honor, but the first year that it was awarded the added “with distinction” designation.

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, a private health insurance provider, has published the Harvard Pilgrim Physician Group Honor Roll annually for the past nine years as part of its strategy to recognize quality care. The honor roll is intended to provide the public with a list of “quality care providers” to use as a reference when selecting a primary care physician.

“The honor roll started as an acknowledgment to honor exemplary care,” said Joanna Kaplan, senior communications specialist at HPHC. “It is a nice distinction to make the roll year after year. It shows [CHA’s] consistency in providing quality care.”

For the Honor Roll, providers are judged on performance against five selected preventive and chronic quality criteria, including well child and adolescent visits, chlamydia screening, upper respiratory infection management and treatment of children with pharyngitis, according to Kaplan.

CHA was one of 36 practices to be named to the Pediatric Honor Roll With Distinction this year, which means the practice outperformed over 90 percent of other health care systems on all five measures, according to Kaplan.

“Having this honor is a confirmation that through a lot of hard work, our department has figured out ways to provide effective, comprehensive care for children,” said David A. Link ’66, chief of pediatrics at CHA and an associate professor of pediatrics at the Medical School.

CHA is a Medical School teaching affiliate largely staffed by individuals associated with HMS that offers residency opportunities for medical students, according to David Cecere, director of media relations for CHA.

CHA delivers pediatric care in 17 different areas and sees over 30,000 children each year. The hospital touts its work with children with asthma and children with attention deficit disorder.

“Addressing these issues requires sophisticated and coordinated effort,” Link said. “We have a strong attention to detail with superb support from our nursing staff.”

Link says he hopes these efforts will continue to be recognized as CHA begins to use new medical technology, such as an ADHD electronic registry.

A total of 54 practices throughout Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire were named to the honor roll, according to a press release from CHA.