Lee Family Practice receives recognition for patient care initiative
Lee — The National Committee for Quality Assurance has renewed Community Health Programs’ Lee Family Practice’s recognition as a Patient-Centered Medical Home, which emphasizes team-oriented, coordinated primary care. The first such designation in Berkshire County, CHP Lee Family Practice was first recognized in 2013. CHP primary care practices Pittsfield and Great Barrington have since earned the designation.
The NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home is a primary care model that emphasizes teamwork and information technology to improve care and patients’ experiences and to reduce costs. Instead of approaching health care as a series of episodic office visits, the PCMH model fosters ongoing partnerships between patients and their personal clinicians.
To earn recognition, which is valid for three years, CHP Lee Family Practice demonstrated the ability to meet the program’s key elements embodying characteristics of the medical home. NCQA standards aligned with the joint principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home established with the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Osteopathic Association.
–E.E.
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Donald Kuczarski joins Salisbury Bank
Lakeville, Conn. — Salisbury Bank and Trust Company has announced that Donald Kuczarski has been appointed as senior vice president, senior commercial loan officer.
Prior to accepting this position, Kuczarski served as senior vice president, commercial loan manager at Pittsfield Cooperative Bank in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from 2011 to 2016. He previously served as senior vice president, commercial loan manager at Greylock Federal Credit Union, also in Pittsfield, from 1999 to 2011. Kuczarski holds a BA in economics from the University of Massachusetts and an MBA in finance from Western New England University. He lives in Pittsfield with his wife, Lisa.
–E.E.
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Austen Riggs Center receives grant to launch research program
Stockbridge — The Austen Riggs Center has received a major grant from philanthropists Bill and Deborah Ryan to launch the MRI-based Characterization of Complex Psychopathology research program, which will explore how complex psychiatric disorders might be characterized in greater detail, with a view toward opening the door to a better understanding of each patient’s mental illness and response to psychotherapy.
Through this project, Austen Riggs Center will unite its sophisticated clinical evaluation with contemporary neuroscience and dimensional tools with the goal of studying the “brain-mind connection” and developing better characterizations of psychiatric disorders.
Bill and Deborah Ryan are Berkshire County residents with a deep interest in advancing research on mental illness. Bill Ryan has been a member of the Austen Riggs Center Advisory Council since 2012.
–E.E.
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Jacob’s Pillow gains new trustees
Becket — Jacob’s Pillow Dance has announced the appointment of four new members to its board of trustees: MacArthur Fellow and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient Kyle Abraham; former New York City Ballet principal dancer Wendy Whelan; lawyer, teacher and active Massachusetts community member Diane Patrick; and Berkshires-based gallerist Sienna Patti.
Abraham is a 2012 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient, a 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award recipient, a 2015 New York City Center choreographer in residence and a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. Abraham holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase, an MFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts and an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Washington & Jefferson College. His choreography has been commissioned and performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and Wendy Whelan’s “Restless Creature,” among others. Abraham made his Jacob’s Pillow debut in 2008 and his choreographic debut with his company Abraham.In.Motion in 2009. He is a former faculty member of the Contemporary Program at the School at Jacob’s Pillow and the 2012 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient. His newest work, “Dearest Home,” will be presented during Festival 2017.
Whelan joined the New York City Ballet as an apprentice in 1984 and became a principal dancer in 1991. Whelan retired from NYCB in October of 2014 and has gone on to develop four new evening-length projects including “Restless Creature,” “Whelan/Watson,” “Other Stories,” “Hagoromo” and, most recently, “Some Of A Thousand Words” with Brian Brooks and Brooklyn Rider. She is on the faculty of New York’s Ballet Academy East and has been given the Orzeck Artist in Residence chair at Barnard College for the 2015-17 school years. Whelan made her Jacob’s Pillow debut with New York City Ballet in 1986 and has been a frequent Festival artist. Her most recent appearances include the world premiere of Pillow-commissioned “Restless Creature” in 2013 and “Some of a Thousand Words” in 2016.
After graduating with honors from Queens College, City University of New York, Patrick spent five years teaching elementary school in New York City before attending Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. She worked as university attorney in the Harvard University Office of the General Counsel, where she spent six years before becoming Harvard’s director/associate vice president for human resources. She joined Ropes & Gray in 1995 and became a partner in 1998 and was co-managing partner of the firm’s Boston office from 2013 to 2016. Currently, she serves on the boards of Massachusetts General Hospital, the Posse Foundation, the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley and Epiphany School, and has also been an outspoken advocate in the Commonwealth’s ongoing effort to end domestic violence. Patrick and her husband, former Governor Deval Patrick, have been frequent patrons and ambassadors of Jacob’s Pillow since 2012.
Based in nearby Lenox, Patti attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a double major in film and art history. She established her eponymous Lenox gallery in 1998. An expert in mid-century and contemporary studio jewelry, she has lectured at universities and museums around the world including, most recently, Rhode Island School of Design, Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. An active Jacob’s Pillow patron and supporter for nearly a decade, Patti was most recently the co-chair of the Pillow’s Season Opening Gala Committee for Festival 2016.
–E.E.
