Georgia Office of Rural Health

Georgia State Flex Program

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

Selected Core Competency: Improving Financial Sustainability

The Georgia Flex Program utilizes Flex funding to provide activities that assist its 30 Critical Access Hospitals in improving financial sustainability. The activities include conducting financial and operational hospital service-line assessments, stakeholder, community, and workforce engagement assessments and interventional action plans. We provide our hospitals with best practices on effective leadership strategies from subject matter experts and provide rapid cycle improvement training assisting hospitals with their rapid cycle improvement projects. We continually conduct program evaluations to identify effective and timely activities to improve financial and operational outcomes relative to state and national benchmarks. These activities are delivered through webinars, monthly newsletters, in-person workshops, a community of practice website, and individual technical assistance and communication.

What is one activity your state is funding through SHIP?

Thirty of Georgia's 55 SHIP-eligible hospitals are pooling SHIP funds to participate in the Simplified Quality Improvement and Peer Learning Network consortium. This network will provide Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) activities that support improved data collection to facilitate quality reporting and improvement. FY 2023 activities include: the future of VBP and the 5-star rating-understanding the data behind your scores; how to manage and track data; peer group learning from Georgia 5-star hospitals; effectively utilizing quality improvement tools; reporting progress; and sharing of best practices through internal dashboards. These SHIP hospitals will benefit from one-on-one training in navigating the National Health Safety Network, five year free access to Care Optics - a simplified quality reporting tool, and access and technical assistance in leveraging the Georgia Discharge Data System.