Building on Our Bronze Achievement
This year, Bethany Life reached an exciting milestone in our ongoing commitment to quality, with The Households of Bethany and Timberland Village earning the 2026 AHCA/NCAL Bronze Commitment to Quality Award. While we are proud to celebrate this national recognition, the Bronze Award represents something even more important: the beginning of a continued journey toward excellence.
The AHCA/NCAL National Quality Award Program is a nationally recognized performance excellence program for long-term and post-acute care organizations. The program encourages organizations to examine how they operate, identify strengths and opportunities for improvement, and develop sustainable systems that lead to better outcomes.
The program consists of three progressive levels: Bronze, Commitment to Quality; Silver, Achievement in Quality; and Gold, Excellence in Quality.
What Does the Bronze Award Mean?
Earning the Bronze Award required the Households of Bethany and Timberland Village to examine their organizational foundations, including their mission, vision, values, and the key factors that contribute to their success.
The award criteria are based on the nationally recognized Baldrige Excellence Framework, a comprehensive approach to organizational improvement that examines how all parts of an organization work together.
For Bethany Life, earning Bronze represents a commitment to asking important questions. What are we doing well? Where can we improve? How do we know our processes are working? Most importantly, how can we continue improving the experiences and outcomes of the people we serve?
The Next Step: Silver in 2027
Bethany Life is now working toward earning the Silver Achievement in Quality Award in 2027.
At the Silver level, organizations move beyond identifying their foundational practices and begin demonstrating effective, systematic approaches to improving organizational performance and health care outcomes. This involves taking an even closer look at areas such as leadership, strategy, the people we serve, workforce, operations, measurement, and results.
The process is intentionally rigorous, with the goal of using what we learn along the way to become a stronger organization.
A Commitment That Continues
Quality improvement is never truly finished. Organizations must continue learning and adapting as needs change and health care evolves.
The National Quality Award journey provides Bethany Life with a framework to build upon our strengths, identify opportunities for improvement, and continually find better ways to serve our residents, tenants, clients, members, and their families.
We are incredibly proud of our Bronze recognition, but we are even more excited about what it represents for the future.
As we work toward Silver in 2027, we remain dedicated to the same commitment that brought us here: providing quality care and services while continually challenging ourselves to learn, grow, and better serve the people who count on Bethany Life.
