Leveraging Quality Measurement to Improve Rural Health - Final Environmental Scan 

Rural Americans face unique health challenges and disparities related to a mix of economic, geographic, social, ethnic, racial, and healthcare delivery system-based factors. Performance measurement can help stakeholders understand and improve healthcare in rural areas, but can be affected by issues such as low case-volume (i.e., when providers do not have enough patients to achieve reliable and valid measurement results). In 2022, the National Quality Forum (NQF) reconvened the Rural Health Advisory Group to discuss potential updates to a set of rural-relevant measures resistant to low case-volume, originally created in 2017-2018. This environmental scan summarizes updates to current measures in the measure set, lists newly developed measures in rural-relevant topic areas, and identifies newly developed measures that address emerging issues for rural populations. The Rural Health Advisory Group will use this information to consider measure additions and removals from the rural key measure list, as well as to guide further discussion on gap areas and priorities for measure development.