Nell J. Redfield Memorial Hospital is happy to announce that our hometown clinic, Oneida County Clinic, has received the 2022 Lilypad Award. The Lilypad Award identifies the top fifty provider-based and independent rural health clinics in the nation. Five facilities are chosen from five different geographic regions, and Oneida County Clinic was chosen as one of the top five clinics in the Northwest Region—an area covering ten northwestern states. This is the second time in three years that Oneida County Clinic has been chosen as a Lilypad Award recipient, having also won the award in 2020. Lilypad is a health care analytics firm based in Maine that analyzes clinical data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to identify the top performing rural health clinics in the nation. The data they analyze is taken from 4800 rural health clinics across the country. Data from these clinics is submitted to CMS through a national reporting requirement called the Medicare Cost Report that is conducted annually by an external auditing agency. In the press release announcing this year’s winners, Gregory Wolf, founder and President of Lilypad, said, “The Lilypad Awards seek to…shed new light on the relative performance among Rural Health Clinics. We feel it is time to recognize high performing clinics as a catalyst for future improvement and investment. Our rural healthcare delivery system relies on affordable access to high-quality primary care services, and Rural Health Clinics play a vital role in strengthening our rural safety net.” In response to this award, John Williams the Chief Executive Officer for Redfield Memorial and its affiliated healthcare entities, including the Oneida County Clinic, stated, “I am incredibly grateful for the wonderful staff and providers that we have in our clinic and throughout the organization. This is the second time that we have won this award in the past three years. The last time we won this award was in 2020, and I think that the significance of the achievement was unfortunately overshadowed by pandemic headlines. It really is wonderful to see everyone’s hard work and consistent attitude of quality care be acknowledged through a nationally recognized award program like Lilypad. We are truly honored to receive this recognition and will, of course, remain focused on providing quality patient care.” Mr. Williams added, “This really is a big deal. This achievement places us in the top fifty rural healthcare clinics in the nation for these performance and quality metrics. That’s the top 50 out of 4800. That puts us in the top 1% of rural healthcare clinics nationally, and we have achieved this twice in the last three years. Through the hard work of our clinic providers, clinical staff, and support staff, our clinic has again achieved one of the highest quality awards in the nation for rural health clinics.” Mr. Williams went on to say, “Our community certainly plays a strong role in this award process as well. Their trust in our services and in our staff is fundamental to the patient care process. We are truly grateful. Congratulations, Oneida County Clinic!” For more information about this award process, visit the Lilypad website at www.lilypad207.com/awards.