Milford Regional Honored For Bariatric Surgery

MILFORD, MA—Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts has recognized Milford Regional Medical Center with a Blue Distinction Center for Bariatric Surgery designation as part of the Blue Distinction Specialty Care program, the hospital announced last week.

Blue Distinction Centers are nationally designated health care facilities that show expertise in delivering improved patient safety and better health outcomes, based on objective measures that were developed with input from the medical community.

To receive a Blue Distinction Center for Bariatric Surgery designation, a health care facility must demonstrate success in meeting patient safety measures as well as bariatric-specific quality measures, including complication and readmission rate for laparoscopic procedures in sleeve gastrectomy, gastric bypass and adjustable gastric band. A health care facility must also be nationally accredited at both the facility and bariatric program-specific levels.

In 2017, the Blue Distinction Centers for Bariatric Surgery program expanded to include not only the type of service provided, but also the site of care. Healthcare facilities were evaluated as either a comprehensive center or as an ambulatory surgery center.

“We are honored to receive this distinction from Blue Cross Blue Shield which recognizes the high quality and comprehensive approach of our bariatric surgery program at Milford Regional,” says Bariatric Surgeon Philip Cohen, MD, in a statement. “Our team of medical professionals is committed to working closely with you through your weight loss journey – before, during and after your surgery.”

Bariatric surgeries are among the most common elective surgeries in the U.S., which provides significant opportunity to improve quality within the health care system, continues the announcement. There were 196,000 bariatric surgeries performed in 2015, according to the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS), and the average cost is more than $28,000 per episode, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Furthermore, it is estimated that nearly 36.5 percent of U.S. adults and 17 percent of youth are obese and impacted by obesity-related health conditions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The estimated annual health care costs of obesity-related conditions are nearly $210 billion per year in the U.S., according to the Journal of Health Economics. On average, health care costs were reduced by 29 percent within five years following bariatric surgery, due to the reduction or elimination of obesity-related conditions, according to ASMBS.

Photo via Shutterstock