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
  University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center
  Date: 04/2004
  This paper seeks to identify rural hospital quality measures that reflect quality in all hospitals and are sensitive to the rural hospital context.