Developing a Quality Performance Measurement System for Critical Access Hospitals

Funder:	Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP)
Research center:	Minnesota Rural Health Research Center Phone: 612.624.6151
Lead researcher:	Ira Moscovice, PhD , 612.624.8618, mosco001@umn.edu
Project completed:	August 2006
Topics:	Critical Access Hospitals and Rural Hospital Flexibility Program Quality

This project continues to support activities related to quality performance measurement relevant for Critical Access Hospitals. By the end of 2005, the technical expert panel had reviewed the findings of the initial field test of the small rural hospital quality measure set and made recommendations for revisions. Efforts to date have focused on the following activities:

• Refinement of the Emergency Department (ED) Measures — Since national quality measurement efforts are collecting detailed information on inpatient quality measures related to AMI, CHF, and pneumonia, we have concentrated the revisions to our measure set in the area of ED measures.
• Implementation of the Field Test of the Revised Quality Performance Measures with CAHs in One State — Our goal for this activity was to implement a field test of the revised ED measures in Washington state through a new training and support model that facilitates quality improvement in CAHs. We used a train-the-trainer model, which will build state capacity to support CAH activities related to quality measurement, and data collection, reporting and use.

CAHs in Washington State participated in this phase of the project. Data collection began in February 2006 and was completed by May 2006, followed by analysis of the data. Each participating hospital was provided with a report that summarizes their results, all participating hospitals’ results, and the results from rural hospitals that participated in our earlier field tests.

Publications

• Rural Hospital Emergency Department Quality Measures: Aggregate Data Report
  Author(s): Jill Klingner, Ira Moscovice
  Report Number: Flex Monitoring Team Data Summary Report No. 3
  Date: 03 / 2007
  Reports findings from a project that tested emergency department quality measures in a voluntary sample of critical access hospitals (CAHs) in Washington State. The quality measures that were tested focused on patients presenting to the emergency department with chest pain/acute myocardial infarction (AMI, or heart attack) or trauma, and patients seen in the emergency department who were transferred to another hospital for care. Report produced by the Flex Monitoring Project, funded by the Office of Rural Health Policy.