Each September, The Chartis Center for Rural Health joins The National Rural Health Association in recognizing the Top 20 Critical Access Hospitals in Kansas City at the annual Critical Access Hospital Conference. While we will convene virtually this week, we are nonetheless delighted to celebrate the outstanding performance of these facilities.
This year has been exceedingly difficult as COVID-19 has added a new pressure point that threatens to further erode the stability of the rural health safety net. Yet time and again, we continue to see examples and powerful stories from across the nation of rural hospitals and their dedicated staff rising to the occasion. It’s an inspiring remainder of how committed rural providers are to caring for their communities.
This year’s Top 20 Critical Access Hospitals is based upon the results of the Hospital Strength INDEX, which were released in February. Celebrating its tenth year, the INDEX is the industry’s most comprehensive and objective assessment of rural hospital performance. Based entirely on publicly available data and utilizing 50 independent indicators, the INDEX assesses performance across eight pillars of performance that span market-, value- and finance-based categories. The INDEX framework is widely used across the nation by independent rural hospitals, health systems with rural footprints and state offices of rural health which provide access to INDEX analytics through grant-funded initiatives.
When we look at the overall performance of these 20 Critical Access Hospitals, it’s hard to ignore the exceptional metrics achieved in the categories of Quality, Outcomes and Patient Perspective. Top 20 CAHs are performing at the 79th, 81st and 85th percentile respectively in these INDEX performance pillars. By comparison, the national CAH medians are all below the 70th percentile for those measures.
Check out the list of this year’s Top 20 Critical Access Hospitals here.
Watch the Top 20 Critical Access Hospital award ceremony at the NRHA’s CAH Conference on Wednesday, September 23 at 1:15 p.m. ET. You can also download the presentation slides here.
If you’d like to learn more about the INDEX and how rural hospitals can utilize INDEX analytics to measure performance and identify opportunities for improvement, reach out to Billy Balfour at wbalfour@chartis.com.
