Rural Health Research Gateway

Developing Relevant Quality Indicators for Rural 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 2003
Topics: Hospitals and clinics
Quality

Two recent Institute of Medicine reports have outlined the importance of quality of care and patient safety issues and proposed a restructuring of the health care system to meet the quality challenge. Quality measurement is an important first step in assessing the quality of health care. However, the development of reliable quality indicators is a difficult task and may be resource intensive. The purpose of this project is to develop relevant quality indicators for rural hospitals. The project will evaluate existing quality indicator and performance measurement systems to assess their relevance for rural hospitals. In addition, an expert panel will be convened to make recommendations for quality indicators that are relevant for rural hospitals.

Publications

  • Measuring Rural Hospital Quality
    Author(s): Ira Moscovice, Douglas R. Wholey, Jill Klingner, Astrid Knott
    Report Number: Working Paper No. 53
    Date: 04 / 2004
    This paper seeks to identify rural hospital quality measures that reflect quality in all hospitals and that are sensitive to the rural hospital context. A conceptual model is developed for measuring rural hospital quality. Hospital quality measures from national and rural organizations are reviewed for their fit to rural hospitals, with a recommendation for an initial core set of quality measures relevant for rural hospitals with less than 50 beds. Finally, avenues for future quality measure development are suggested.