Project Information

From 2003-2008, the Flex Monitoring Team (FMT), a consortium of the Universities of Minnesota, Southern Maine, and North Carolina, has evaluated the impact of the Flex Program on rural hospitals and communities and the role of states in achieving the overall objectives of the program in three areas:

  1. improving access to and the quality of health care services;
  2. improving the financial performance of CAHs; and
  3. engaging rural communities in health care system development.
The FMT effort has been characterized by the development of relevant performance measures and evaluation of program impact in each of these core areas. For 2011-2012, the FMT is conducting four ongoing projects that build on our previous work to develop relevant quality, financial and community impact performance measures and reporting systems. The ongoing continuing projects are: 1) Maintaining and Updating the National CAH Database; 2) Measuring Financial Performance in CAHs; 3) Measuring Quality Performance: National and State CAH Hospital Compare Analyses; 4) Measuring Community Impact and Benefit of Critical Access Hospitals. In addition, we are conducting six new projects, listed below.

Continuing Projects

  1. Maintaining and Updating the National CAH Database;
  2. Measuring Financial Performance in CAHs; amd
  3. Measuring Quality Performance: National and State CAH Hospital Compare Analyses
  4. Measuring Community Impact and Benefit of Critical Access Hospitals
New Projects
  1. Development of Medicare Outpatient Indicators for the CAH Financial Indicators Report;
  2. Evidence-Based Medication Safety Strategies and Measures for Critical Access Hospitals;
  3. The Effect of Health Information Technology on Critical Access Hospital and Rural Hospital Efficiency;
  4. Understanding the Community Benefit and Safety Net Activities of Critical Access and Other Rural Hospitals;
  5. Evaluating the Impact of State Flex Program EMS Initiatives;and
  6. Improving Patient Safety: Use of Transfer Protocols to Improve Care Transitions from Nursing Facilities to Critical Access Hospitals;