Wyoming Department of Health

Top Flex Activities

Program Area: Support for Quality Improvement

In the past 12 months, the Wyoming Flex Program has conducted 398 technical assistance calls and communications, 13 quality improvement (QI) / financial improvement (FI) roundtables, produced 10 Wyoming Quality Improvement Matters (WYQIM) newsletters, gained over 2,100 views of the WYQIM website resources, and provided 27 continuing education and professional development scholarships. Four critical access hospitals (CAHs) utilized Flex funds for specific QI projects within the hospital. The Wyoming Flex Program focused on whiteboard communications, discharge planning packets, patient safety culture surveys (PSCS), and antibiotic stewardship for QI. In fiscal year (FY) 2016, Flex funds were used to assist nine hospitals with PSCS and developed six Emergency Department Transfer Communication (EDTC) trainings. In FY 2015, five Wyoming CAHs participated in health information systems (HIS), eight participated in peer reviews, and five participated in PSCS.

Program Area: Support for Financial and Operational Improvement

FY 2017 Flex funds provided 11 scholarships for continuing education, training, or professional development in hospital finance and provided four CAHs with funds for specific financial improvement. In addition, the Quality Health Indicators (QHi) financial benchmarking project is moving forward. The initial spreadsheet and determination of data is complete. The data collection tool and the ability to upload it easily into QHi is in development. The anticipated date for all CAHs to upload their financial benchmarking data is January 2019.

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

Ten scholarships for population health, including diabetes prevention, infection prevention, immunizations, suicide prevention, and nutrition were awarded in FY 2017. In emergency medical services (EMS), two CAHs utilized funds for coding, one CAH used funds for transport training, and 11 reimbursement scholarships were provided for the 2018 Rural EMS Care Conference and the National EMS Conference.  

Please provide information about Collaboration/Shared Services.

Wyoming State Office of Rural Health (SORH) collaborated with the Wyoming Department of Health Chronic Disease on diabetes prevention, the Wyoming Primary Care Association on the 2018 Power of Rural conference, and the Wyoming Hospital Association for fiscal administration and support. 

In addition, Mountain Pacific Quality Improvement Organization (MPQIO) supports training on the antibiotic stewardship program and hospital-acquired infections. MPQIO also provided a patient engagement seminar that was open to CAHs.  

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

This is an area that the Wyoming Flex Program is just beginning to coordinate. The financial benchmarking is one of the network activities. Several CAHs have expressed an interest in sharing expenses and this may be happening. 

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

All 16 of Wyoming CAHs are meeting the minimum requirement for reporting Medicare Beneficiary Quality Improvement Project (MBQIP). The Wyoming Flex Program provides MBQIP dashboards to the CAHs with analysis and suggestions for improvement.  

Do you have any hospitals interested in converting to CAH status?:

Program Statistics