Utah Office of Primary Care and Rural Health

Utah State Flex Program

What is one Core Competency your state Flex Program is working on developing through Flex activities?

Core Competency: Improving Financial Sustainability

The Utah Flex Program collaborates with the Utah Hospital Association (UHA) to support the financial and operational improvement efforts of Utah CAHs. The UHA Rural Hospital Improvement Director acts as the coordinator for all Flex financial and operational improvement activities. At the UHA, one of his primary roles is to act as Director for the Rural 9 Independent Hospital Network, making him uniquely qualified to oversee the Flex financial and operational improvement activities. The Rural 9 Independent Hospital Network is made up of the nine rural independent hospitals (eight CAHs, one prospective payment system) in the state, which tend to be small community safety-net hospitals.  The current UHA Rural Hospital Improvement Director was a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a small CAH in Utah for 15 years.  One successful strategy in providing high-quality, low-cost resources to the Rural 9 hospitals is collaborating with the University of Utah and Intermountain Healthcare to share expertise and training.  

What is one activity your state is funding through SHIP?

The Utah SHIP program funded three system hospitals' projects to work with CHARTIS to help them focus on specific shared quality metrics related to quality improvement, process improvement, and patient experience. These hospitals were able to gain great insights into these metrics from the training they received from CHARTIS.