Current Projects
- CAH Quality & Performance Improvement Project
- State Rural Health Plan
- Kansas Rural Health Works
- Trauma Education & Training – funding available
- Network Grant Notice
- EMS Medical Director Training
- Quality Health Indicator (QHi) Project
CAH QI/PI Project
Almost all Critical Access Hospitals in Kansas are participating in what has become a multi-state CAH Quality & Performance Improvement Program. The Program provides CAH tools to improve quality and performance through assessment, consultation, education, and networking/benchmarking.
Each organization completes a formal self-assessment project with the guidance of Darlene Bainbridge of D.D. Bainbridge and Associates. Darlene also provides one-on-one consultation and guidance with facilities to help them develop and carry out an organizational plan to enhance quality and performance. In addition to on-site and phone/email support, a series of educational programs are offered through regional workshops and webinars/conference calls. These programs are supplemented with a series of on-line training modules.
To encourage dialogue and sharing of best practices among project participants, the project supports an on-line benchmarking project, Quality Health Indicators.
PROJECT NEWS: As of July 2008, Critical Access Hospitals in Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Virginia and Wyoming have begun participating in this project. CAHs in Michigan, Nebraska and South Dakota are involved only in the benchmarking project.
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State Rural Health Plan
KRHOP is facilitating the development of a Kansas Rural Health Plan to help create a new strategic direction for the FLEX program in Kansas. Rochelle Spinarski is facilitating the project and is currently meeting with workgroups established to provide “grass roots” input into development of the plan. A statewide advisory group has also been named to assist KRHOP finalize the plan. The plan will provide direction as KRHOP leaders prepare annual FLEX applications to the federal Office of Rural Health Policy.
Over the past several months, the KRHOP has been working with Rochelle Spinarski to update the Kansas Rural Health Plan. The draft plan is now available for review. Comments had to be submitted to Rochelle Spinarski by July 18.
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Quality Health Indicator (QHi) Project
QHi is the Web-based hospital benchmarking program developed through the Kansas Hospital Association and the Kansas Office of Rural Health. Designed by Critical Access Hospitals across Kansas, the user-driven project allows rural hospitals to collect, track and trend data that are pertinent to their unique environment and to participate in a nationally recognized initiative to demonstrate health care quality in rural America.
Recent updates to the application are designed to improve data integrity and enhance the reporting process. A most popular feature of the site is the Core Measures Dashboard that displays measurement comparisons for the eight core measures. Each participating hospital is asked to collect at least the core measures, a subset of the over 40 measures available in the QHi library of indicators. Statistical averages for the hospital, state and all of QHi are provided for the most recent three months. Users now have the opportunity to create their own customized dashboard by selecting any of the measures they currently collect to display. Hospitals print the easy-to-read dashboards to illustrate their hospital's performance and identify areas of opportunity when presenting at clinical quality, human resource, financial, operational and board meetings. To improve data integrity, the submission pages have been enhanced to provide instant feedback by automatically calculating measures and immediately displaying results. In addition, entries made the prior month are provided for comparison.
Fifty-eight Kansas Critical Access Hospitals and 133 Critical Access Hospitals nationwide participate in the project. For more information on QHi, please contact Sally Perkins.
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Kansas Rural Health Works
Rural community leaders understand that there is a link between healthy people and health communities. However, these community leaders often do not grasp the full economic impact of the health care system on their local economy, nor the healthcare system’s dependence on its local residents. Rural Health Works is a national project, supported by the Office of Rural Health Policy, that seeks to help communities understand the economic impact of the health care system on the local economy and to enhance community understanding of the operation and needs of that health care system.
In Kansas, the Rural Health Works project is a collaborative venture of the Kansas Rural Health Options Project and the College of Agricultural Economics at Kansas State University. In 2003 Kansas Rural Health Works undertook county-level analyses of the impact of the health care system. These reports were updated in 2006 and can be downloaded at the Kansas Rural Health Works website.
The College of Agricultural Economics (CAE) has completed five programs in Kansas (Belleville, Concordia, Goodland, Oakley and Stafford). The CAE is working with two additional communities in Osborne and WaKeeney to enhance local residents’ understanding of the health care system. The project consists of a community health survey and the development of a community health care inventory. Data may be used to spearhead a planning process designed to support the health care system and to encourage the community to keep their health care dollars at home. Additional information regarding on the program may be found in the Kansas Rural Health Work's Community Engagement program's executive summary. Contact Chris Tilden at the KDHE Office of Local and Rural Health or Chad Austin at KHA to learn more about the project.
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Trauma Education and Training
The Kansas Rural Health Options Project is providing up to 10 - $1,000 scholarships for rural physicians to participate in the Advanced Trauma Life Support course. These scholarships will be provided to qualified applicants on a first-come, first-serve basis. It is expected that the scholarships will be used prior to December 31, 2008. Interested individuals should submit a formal letter of request that includes the physician’s name, license number, course and hospital name to Chad Austin, Vice President, Government Relations; Kansas Hospital Association; 215 SE 8th Avenue; Topeka KS 66603. For further information contact Debbie Hall or Chad Austin at the KHA office, (785) 233-7436.
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Network Grant Notice
The Kansas Rural Health Options Project (KRHOP) is pleased to announce the availability of grant monies through the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (FLEX) Program to develop, complete or enhance an initiative that will result in increased information technology capabilities or enhanced quality/performance improvement implementations for critical access hospitals and networks. We anticipate funding up to four projects with a ceiling of approximately $15,000. Due to the uncertainty of whether funds were going to be available this year and the end of the grant cycle quickly approaching, proposals will need to be returned by August 29th. It is expected that award notices will be made by August 31st. Please contact Chad Austin (caustin@kha-net.org) or Chris Tilden (ctilden@kdhe.state.ks.us) for additional information.
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EMS Medical Director Training
Training for EMS Medical Directors has not been offered in the state of Kansas since 1999. As part of the KRHOP mission to work with EMS and rural health stakeholders to better integrate EMS into the healthcare delivery system, KRHOP is working with partners including the Kansas Medical Society, the Board of EMS and others to develop a new program to provide information and training to EMS medical directors who lack access to formal training on the role and responsibilities of the medical director for a local ambulance service. For more information contact Chris Tilden at the Office of Local and Rural Health.
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