Guthrie County Public Health received a prestigious award on Monday that recognizes the country’s best home health agencies that provide the most satisfactory patient care.

Nurse Administrator Lisa Chiodo says her agency has been named a 2013 HHCAHPS Honors recipient, which means Guthrie County Public Health is among the top 20 percent of more than 1,200 eligible home health agencies in terms of patient experience as deemed by their own patient’s point of view.

Chiodo is elated to have received the award and proud of her entire staff.

“It’s a wonderful honor for our entire agency because it really takes a team to take care of the clients out in the home and in the community.  So we definitely have reason to celebrate.”

The honor was established by a company called Deyta, which administered surveys to home health clients during the evaluation period of April 2012 to March 2013.  Chiodo says her agency is required to send out these surveys to clients since they are a Medicare certified agency with more than 60 clients.

Chiodo says the honor is ultimately the result of hard work from a staff that has shown true dedication to the community for many years.  Some of her staff has been with the agency as far back as the late 1980s and early 90s.

While there isn’t a monetary award that comes with the honor, Chiodo does hope to use the recognition as a means to benefit her agency in the future.

“When you get these types of recognitions and the data proves that we are a reputable agency, we can use that for grant applications to show that what we’re doing is a continuous quality improvement and that we’re always striving to do better.”

Anyone would like to learn more about Guthrie County Public Health’s recent honor can contact them at 641-747-3972.