A Small Conference Grant awarded by AHRQ ($50,000) supported the "National Conference on Small Numbers - Challenges and Innovations in Evaluation of Quality of Care Measures Based on Small Counts" that was held at the Dallas-Fort Worth Marriott on March 28th and 29th, 2007.

The purpose of the conference was to address the critical issue of accurately assessing the health status of populations through the measurement of indicators of quality of care and patient safety in small community hospitals and rural facilities that experience small cell size issues.

Objectives:

1. Discussed the methodological challenges of the low frequency of individual clinical processes and adverse events tracked as quality and safety indicators of rural hospitals
2. Discussed the development of composite quality measures, including a generalizable algorithm into which hospital administrators can input facility-level data to determine an overall quality score

The presentations addressed research approaches and findings on the following topics:

• Sharing the methodological challenges posed by the small counts in data files from rural and small community hospitals
• The generation and discussion of methodologies to address problems of disclosure and misinterpretation resulting from small numbers
• The generation and discussion of a composite measure as a single indicator of hospital or area performance, to supplement the individual indicators/ measures

Dr. Nancy Dickey, M.D., President of the Texas A&M University Health Science Center, opened the event with a keynote address on Policy Implications for the use (or not use) of Small Numbers in Healthcare, and Dr. Jerod Loeb, Ph.D., Executive Vice-President, Division of Research of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare will be the Keynote Speaker on the second day of the conference Measuring Performance: Challenge and Opportunity. Dr. Josie Williams, M.D., M.M.M., Director of the Rural and Community Health Institute is the Principal Investigator; Dr. Percy Galimbertti, M.D., Ph.D., Research Scientist, is the Co-Principal Investigator and conference coordinator, together with Ms. Kathy Mechler, R.N., M.S., CPHQ, RCHI's Director of Medical Services.

The conference was also sponsored by the Rural and Community Health Institute of the Texas A&M Health Science Center, HRSA, the Sid Richardson Foundation, the Institute for Healthcare Research and Improvement of the Baylor Healthcare System, The Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council, and the National Association of Health Data Organizations.

For more information please click here. To view an agenda of the event please click here.