National CAH Quality Inventory and Assessment

It is time again to fill out the annual Critical Access Hospital (CAH) Quality Inventory and Assessment (“Assessment”)! This is the third year of the national survey created by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) and their partners, managed by the Flex Monitoring Team (FMT) at the University of Minnesota, and we are excited to announce that the survey period is open.

All CAHs are required to complete the Assessment. Notably, the Assessment is also the only way for CAHs to submit the CAH Quality Infrastructure measure, a core MBQIP measure. We value your hospital’s input highly, and do not have another way to obtain this information. The survey is now open, and FORHP requests that you read the information below and submit your Assessment responses by November 21, 2025.

This Assessment will allow FORHP to learn more about CAH service lines offered, quality improvement (QI) infrastructure and activities, and related quality measures. The Assessment will be an opportunity to gather a wealth of information that will help our state’s Flex Program improve how we support safe and high-quality care in CAHs. Further, the information informs how we allocate Flex funding through various programs throughout the state. More information about the Assessment can be found here. 

Preparation

You can expect to spend approximately 60 minutes to collect and complete the Assessment and are encouraged to submit one Assessment on behalf of your CAH with input from a variety of team members. 

Here is a pdf with the full Assessment questions and instructions. We strongly recommend that you use this to collect the responses about your hospital (additionally, a word document can be found here for collaboration amongst your team). While you can collect the information in a word document or pdf, you must use the Qualtrics link below to submit your Assessment data (information submitted via email to your state’s Flex Program will not be accepted).

We encourage you to refer to the responses to your Assessment from last year when collecting your responses for this year. Your completed Assessment responses from last year were emailed to the individual that submitted your Assessment as well as the Quality Contact listed in your facility’s response, and the email subject was “Thank you for your response - 2024 CAH Assessment” from “fmtdata@umn.edu.”

Submission

When you have collected the data for all the questions for your facility, please follow the link below, which will redirect you to the FMT-administered Qualtrics platform. It is highly recommended that you enter all your responses in a single session as responses may not be saved between sessions. Those submitting the final response and those entered as quality contacts will receive a confirmation email with a pdf of your responses after you submit.

Should you have any questions throughout the process of completing and submitting the Assessment, you can contact Megan Polster or the FMT. We appreciate your contributions to the Assessment and look forward to learning more from the results and sharing them with you. 

Sincerely, 

Samantha Peck

Rural Hospitals and Clinics Program Manager 

Wisconsin Office of Rural Health

608-261-1891

Megan Polster

Communications Coordinator

Wisconsin Office of Rural Health

608-262-9545