Spirit of Women awards set for May 19

n The Spirit of Women Initiative will honor women, young and mature, for their contributions to the community on May 19.

The Spirit of Women Awards will be announced during A Woman's Place Lunchtime Learning Series event at noon May 19 at the First Baptist Fellowship Hall.

The awards honor ordinary women in our community who do extraordinary things. Nominees for amp"Young Person Role Model,amp" amp"Community Hero in Actionamp" and amp"Healthcare Hero,amp" will be recognized and winners announced. Local winners go on to become national nominees for Spirit of Women Awards.

Sharion Aycock, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Mississippi, will be the featured speaker.

Advance registration is requested for the lunchtime program, which is sponsored by the Health Care Foundation of North Mississippi. Lunch will be provided for those who pre-register by Friday, May 15. Call (800) 843-3375 to register or get more information.

Magnolia has chest pain accreditation

n Magnolia Regional Health Center has received full Cycle II accreditation status from the Society of Chest Pain Centers.

The chest pain center's protocol driven and systematic approach to patient management allows physicians to reduce time to treatment during the critical early stages of a heart attack, when treatments are most effective, and to better monitor patients when it is not clear whether they are having a coronary event. Such observation helps ensure a patient is neither sent home too early nor needlessly admitted.

NMMC Skilled Nursing

earns four CMS stars

n North Mississippi Medical Center's Skilled Nursing Facility and Baldwyn Nursing Facility have been awarded four-star ratings from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service.

CMS released quality ratings for 15,800 nursing homes around the nation. NMMC's Skilled Nursing Facility and Baldwyn Nursing Facility were the only nursing facilities in Lee County with a four-star rating.

Facilities are assigned star ratings from a low of one star to a high of five stars based on health inspection surveys, staffing information and quality of care measures. The ratings are publicly available on the agency's Nursing Home Compare Web site at www.medicare.gov.

A five-star designation means the facility ranks "much above average," four star indicates "above average," three means "about average," two is a "below average" ranking with a one indicating that a facility ranks "much below average." Rankings are dynamic and will be updated monthly. In the first round of quality ratings, about 12 percent of the nation's nursing homes received a full five-star rating, while 22 percent scored at the low end with one star.

Daily Journal reports