TDA STATE OFFICE OF RURAL HEALTH WINS NATIONAL AWARD (7/30/2021)

The Texas Flex Program, a program managed by the State Office of Rural Health to support and improve Critical Access Hospitals in rural areas, was awarded the 2021 Medicare Beneficiary Quality Improvement (MBQIP) Spirit Award by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy.

“This award is not just recognition for the job we’re doing here in the TDA State Office of Rural Health,” said Miller, “but for the tremendous job done by all the healthcare professionals at rural hospitals across the Lone Star State.  The recent COVID-19 pandemic packed a wallop for rural hospitals, but this award shows that we’ve come out stronger and better, because that’s what Texans do.  We don’t just survive, we thrive.  I could not be more proud.”

The goal of the MBQIP Spirit Award is to recognize state programs that strive to be innovative, improve and advance the objectives of the federal project in their state.   

According to Natalia Vargas, Federal MBQIP Officer for Texas, the Spirit Award “underscores the incredible efforts, hard work, innovative thinking to problem solve, and the drive to truly make healthcare better for rural populations.”

The Medicare Beneficiary Quality Improvement Project (MBQIP) is a quality improvement activity under the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (Flex) program of the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP). The goal of MBQIP is to improve the quality of care provided in critical access hospitals (CAHs), by increasing quality data reporting by CAHs and then driving quality improvement activities based on the data.

Dedicated to serving the health needs of rural Texas, the TDA State Office of Rural Health (SORH) works with local health care providers and other partners to support access to quality health care for rural Texans. SORH works to support rural health providers by providing technical assistance with finance, operations, and quality through a variety of grant programs, workshops, and one-on-one assistance.  Additional resources include educational awards that are available to individual clinicians and health care institutions, information and referral, funding resources, and assistance with medical license applications. For more information on the Texas Department of Agriculture’s State Office of Rural Health, please visit the TDA SORH website.