Establishing Evidenced-based Safety Standards for Rural Hospitals - Phase 1

Funders:	Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP)
Research center:	University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center Phone: 612.624.6151
Research staff:	Andrew F. Coburn, PhD Ira Moscovice, PhD Mary Wakefield, PhD, RN
Project completed:	March 2004
Topics:	Hospitals and clinics Quality

The purpose of this project is to develop and test evidence-based safety improvement interventions in rural hospitals. The project has two phases. The objective of Phase One is to identify key patient safety areas and interventions of particular relevance to rural hospitals that have the potential to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety. The objectives of Phase Two are to implement and evaluate the interventions and disseminate the results to purchasers, policymakers, rural hospitals, and regulators. This will be accomplished by field testing rural relevant interventions in a sample of rural hospitals in different regions and evaluating whether there are improvements in patient safety. Phase One activities will include: a review of the relevant published literature on quality of care and medical errors in rural hospitals; an analysis of a national sample of hospital discharges from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP); a survey of purchaser groups to identify their current initiatives related to patient safety in rural hospitals; the establishment and convening of two expert advisory panel meetings; and a telephone survey of a stratified sample of rural hospitals to assess the relevance and feasibility of the interventions identified by the advisory panel. This project is being conducted by a collaborative research team that includes senior researchers from the University of North Dakota, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Southern Maine.

Publications

• Prioritizing Patient Safety Interventions in Small Rural Hospitals
  Date: 12/2006
  Reports the results of a study seeking to determine if 26 patient safety practices recommended by an expert panel as relevant to rural hospitals would be validated in terms of rural relevance and implementability by administrators and quality managers in small rural facilities in Maine, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. This research was supported by funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Office of Rural Health Policy.