Patient Assessments and Quality of Care in Rural Hospitals

Funder:	Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP)
Research center:	Upper Midwest Rural Health Research Center Phone: 612.624.8618
Lead researcher:	Ira Moscovice, PhD
Contact:	Michelle Casey, MS, 612.623.8316, mcasey@umn.edu
Project funded:	September 2007
Project completed:	December 2009
Topics:	Health services Quality

The national focus on health care quality and patient safety has resulted in increased attention to patients' assessments of their experiences receiving health care. Patient-centered care is one of the Institute of Medicine's six aims for the health care system. The results of patient satisfaction surveys can be used in conjunction with other quality measures to evaluate the quality of hospital care and identify areas for quality improvement.

This study will

1. Analyze the relationships between rural patients' perspectives of hospital quality of care and key hospital characteristics that may influence patients' experiences of hospital care
2. Assess whether rural patients' perspectives of hospital quality of care are related to quality measures focused on the provision of recommended care for medical conditions

The analytic approach will include multivariate analyses of hospital-level Consumer Assessment of Health Providers and Systems Survey (HCAHPS) data and Hospital Compare process measure data linked with data on hospital and service area characteristics from the American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey data and the Area Resource File (ARF).

The products of this project will include a working paper, a policy brief and an article that will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.

Publications

• Patient Assessments and Quality of Care in Rural Hospitals (Final Report)
  Author(s): Michelle Casey, Gestur Davidson
  Date: 06 / 2010
  Analyzes the relationships between rural patients' perspectives of hospital quality of care and key hospital characteristics that may influence patients' experiences of hospital care. It assesses whether rural patients' perspectives of hospital quality of care are related to quality measures focused on the provision of recommended care for medical conditions.
• Patient Assessments and Quality of Care in Rural Hospitals (Policy Brief)
  Author(s): Michelle Casey, Gestur Davidson
  Date: 06 / 2010
  Analyzes the relationships between rural patients' perspectives of hospital quality of care and key hospital characteristics that may influence patients' experiences of hospital care.