Wyoming Department of Health

Top Flex Activities

Program Area: Support for Quality Improvement

In fiscal year (FY) 2015, five Wyoming critical access hospitals (CAHs) participated in health information systems (HIS), eight participated in peer reviews and five CAHs participated in patient safety culture surveys (PSCS). In FY 2016, Flex funds were used to assist nine hospitals with PSCS and developed six Emergency Department Transfer Communication (EDTC) trainings. For FY 2017, Wyoming Flex is focusing on whiteboard commmunications, discharge planning packets, PSCS, antibiotic stewardship and peer review for quality improvement.

Please share a success story about reporting quality data or using quality data to help CAHs in your state improve patient care.

Consistently reviewing the MBQIP Data Reports has helped Wyoming Flex determine areas for improvement, including nurse communication and discharge planning.

Data reporting successes:

• EDTC measure reporting increased from 37% in FY 2015 to 78% in FY 2016
• Outpatient measure reporting increased from 68% in FY 2015 to 76% in FY 2016
• Patient Safety measure reporting increased from 73% in FY 2015 to 78% in FY 2016
• Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) reporting increased from 72% in FY 2015 to 75% in FY 2016

Program Area: Support for Financial and Operational Improvement

The Wyoming Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) held its annual meeting in November 2017. At that meeting, discussions were held about the future of rural and frontier health care financial management. Further planning in regards to benchmarking departments and developing a consortium to share expenses is in progress. 

Program Area: Support for Population Health Management and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Integration

Wyoming continues to work on Time-Sensitive Critical Diagnosis training for EMS. In addition, the Wyoming Department of Health - Office of Emergency Medical Services (WDH-OEMS) is working on a statewide assessment of EMS to determine areas for improvement. One identified need targeted for improvement is supervisor training.  

Please provide information about Collaboration/Shared Services

For population health, Wyoming Flex is working on diabetes, health disparities and language access. Collaborating with WDH Chronic Disease is instrumental in developing diabetes prevention programs and training lifestyle coaches. The WDH Office of Health Equity is also collaborating with the Flex Program to bring health disparity education to CAHs and provide interpreter training.

Please provide information about any efforts to assist CAHs/communities and partner organizations in the transition to value-based care.

The importance of value-based care was presented to Wyoming CAHs at the annual HFMA meeting. Several different people presented on different aspects of value-based care and some discussion followed.

Please provide information about network activities in your state to support Flex Program activities.

Wyoming is working on CAH financial data benchmarking. Specifically, benchmarking food service, environmental service and maintenance to compare cost spent in these areas and determine best practices. 

Please describe how your state Flex Program has enhanced its use of data in the past year.

In FY 2015, Wyoming began the year with five CAHs participating in Quality Health Indicators (QHi). That number increased to seven CAHs in FY 2016 and is on target to continue to increase in FY 2017. QHi provides an opportunity for CAH administration to quickly and easily receive reports based on the data submitted with a much shorter turn-around time. This is especially important with fiscal reporting as delays in the analysis of data can cause short-term and long-term financial complications for CAHs. Wyoming Flex hopes to have at least half of the state's CAHs reporting financial benchmarking data by the end of FY 2017. 

Program Statistics