“Quality improvement is important in all care settings and for all Americans, and these recent efforts by Congress are vital steps toward ensuring better care for people living in rural communities,” said Ann Greiner, vice president of public affairs at NQF.

In the letter (PDF) to Secretary Burwell, caucus co-chairs, Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY), Al Franken (D-MN), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), and Pat Roberts (R-KS), urge the agency to include rural providers in Centers for Medicare and Medicaid quality measurement and improvement programs. They also urge HHS to task NQF to further the work of the Measure Applications Partnership and convene a rural workgroup to identify measures and measure gaps to improve rural healthcare.

The Rural Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 2016, introduced by Sens. Franken and Heitkamp, establishes a core set of healthcare quality measures for rural providers and provides support, via grants, for rural providers to implement or expand quality improvement reporting programs. It is part of a legislative package to improve healthcare for millions of rural Americans.

“As payment is increasingly linked to quality and outcomes and patients increasingly seek healthcare information, it’s more important than ever for all providers to report on healthcare quality,” said Ira Moscovice, PhD, co-chair of NQF’s Rural Health Committee and the head of the University of Minnesota’s Division of Health Policy and Management in the School of Public Health. "While some rural providers will face challenges in reporting quality measures, there is an emerging consensus across rural healthcare leaders that there are measures they can report, and the time is now to get a better sense of how they are performing and where to improve care for their patients.”