This page includes information pertinent to Small Rural Hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals.
Updated Population Health toolkit
The National Rural Health Resource Center’s 2025 update to its Population Health Toolkit — which includes the most current population health data from a half-dozen publicly available datasets — is now available online.
The toolkit, which was first released in 2016 and is updated annually, contains:
- A population health readiness assessment that allows healthcare facilities to gauge their preparedness for population health
- Tools and resources to support healthcare facilities as they build their population health management capabilities
- A web-based dashboard that displays county, state, national, and, when available, facility-level data on a range of population health measures, organized into more than a dozen scenarios that explore health conditions, health inequities and the leading causes of death in rural America
- Tutorial videos that offer step-by-step guidance on conducting population health analytics
Medicaid Renewal Resources
Hospital Price Transparency: Get Resources to Help You Comply
from CMS – Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
Starting July 1, 2024, hospitals must conform to a CMS template layout and data specifications for making public their standard charge information in a comprehensive machine-readable file (MRF). Starting January 1, 2025, you’re also required to encode additional data elements.
We have resources to help you meet these new requirements:
- Data Dictionary GitHub Repository:
- Required CMS template layouts
- Data dictionary
- Examples of how to encode standard charges in the MRF
- Q&A discussion board
- Tools webpage:
- Online validator
- Command-line interface validator
- TXT file generator
- MRF naming convention tool
- Resources webpage:
- Final rules
- FAQs
- Guides
- Webinar materials
Hospital Price Transparency regulations require each hospital operating in the U.S. to publish a comprehensive MRF with the standard charges for all items and services they provide.
More Information:
- Register for the October 21 webinar on meeting the upcoming January 2025 requirements
- Email questions to PriceTransparencyHospitalCharges@cms.hhs.gov
The Changing Landscape of Quality Measurement
Decision Tool
We highly recommend having your leadership team and others listen to this series. The videos are short, 3- 7 minutes, and they don’t need to be viewed at one time.
Learning Modules
If you are new to the Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program in 2023 or are unsure where to start, we have created this decision tree tool to help you navigate it.
These learning modules provide an overview of the 2023 Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program requirements for eligible and critical access hospitals.
Swing Beds
Click each box for the PowerPoint Presentation
Swing Bed Documentation – Click each box below
This project is/was supported by the Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under grant number U2WRH33330-01-00 Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (Flex) Program and 0% financed with nongovernmental sources. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements to be inferred by HRSA, HHS, or the U.S. Government.