PBMC Maintains Preferred Status

Penobscot Bay Medical Center is a preferred hospital, maintaining its Tier 1 status from the Maine State Employee Health Commission. PBMC earned blue ribbons in all three of the commission's rating categories.

The blue ribbons are awarded by the Maine Health Management Coalition's (MHMC) Pathways to Excellence (PTE) Hospital Measurement and Reporting Initiative, which was designed to create a robust dashboard of measures comparing the performance of Maine hospitals with each other, and, where available, with regional and national performance comparisons. The PTE Hospital Measurement and Reporting Initiative is intended to measure and report on the performance in Maine hospitals in the areas of patient satisfaction, patient safety and clinical quality. This information is updated on a quarterly basis with facilities being 'tiered' by the Maine State Employee Health Commission twice annually.

Achieving Tier 1 status represents a significant savings to the people who are insured by the Maine State Employee Health Commission, and will provide them a discounted out-of-pocket co-payment when treated at PBMC.

The Maine Health Management Coalition is a non-profit organization whose more than 50 members include public, private and non-profit employers, hospitals, health plans and doctors working together to measure and report healthcare quality and use this information to drive quality improvement. Currently, more than 200,000 member employees and thousands of others are benefiting from the Maine Health Management Coalition's work. The coalition's web site is www.mhmc.info.