Small Rural Hospitals Have a Harder Time Achieving Success in Continuous Quality Improvement: An Example From a Stroke Care Network

Conclusions: Our results demonstrate successful collection of quality data among hospitals bound only by an affiliation agreement. Areas to improve quality identified are door to computed tomographic interpretation, thrombolytic therapy, and dysphagia screening. We suspect that DSC certification is driving quality success in our network hospitals. That Appalachian affiliate hospitals are less likely to succeed could be due to a number of reasons such as the fewer resources available in Appalachian counties and may reflect the financial plight of rural hospitals more generally.
Source: Quality Management in Healthcare - Category: Health Management Tags: Data for Quality Management Source Type: research