Rural Quality Improvement Technical Assistance (RQITA)

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Equity is at the heart of our rural-focused quality work. By enhancing the ability of rural health care professionals to measure, improve, and demonstrate quality of care, we are working to ensure that all patients, regardless of geography, have access to high-quality health care and to decrease related disparities in outcomes.

Demonstrating value through reporting and improving quality measures has become increasingly important for small rural hospitals and clinics. But understanding quality reporting systems and using data for improvement can be particularly challenging for rural health care organizations with limited resources.

Through the RQITA cooperative agreement with the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP), Stratis Health aims to fill these gaps, focusing on improving quality and health outcomes in rural communities across the country by providing technical assistance to beneficiaries of quality initiatives:

• The 45 State Flex Programs funded through the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (Flex) Program and about 1,350 critical access hospitals (CAHs) they support nationwide
• The 15 grantees of the Small Health Care Provider Quality Improvement (Rural Quality) program

In this work, we leverage existing national partnerships with organizations and people dedicated to improving rural health and deliver technical assistance to increase quality data reporting and drive care quality.

Actions

• Provide technical assistance and develop quality reporting and improvement resources to support CAH success in the Medicare Beneficiary Quality Improvement Project (MBQIP), and implementation of quality improvement initiatives by the Rural Quality Program Grantees across the country
• Coordinate the National Rural Virtual Quality Improvement Mentor Program, through which experienced CAH quality improvement staff from across the country serve as virtual mentors, sharing examples and advice on how to address common quality challenges in small hospitals
• Convene the Rural Quality Advisory Council, comprised of national and local leaders in rural health quality across the country, to gather insights on quality measurement and FORHP quality programming
• Support implementation of the Emergency Department Transfer Communication (EDTC) measure, a core measure of MBQIP

We make lives better by…

Improving the quality of rural health care delivery nationally:

• Providing technical assistance to beneficiaries of FORHP quality initiatives aimed at improving quality of care and outcomes for rural communities
• Developing resources and providing education to support quality reporting and improvement activities among rural providers
• Supporting FORHP in strategic planning and continuous program improvement to meet the needs of rural providers as it relates to quality reporting and improvement activities

Contact

Sarah Brinkman
Program Manager
952-853-8553