Assessing clinical quality performance and staffing capacity differences between urban and rural Health Resources and Services Administration-funded health centers in the United States: A cross sectional study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In the United States, there are nearly 1,400 Health Resources and Services Administration-funded health centers (HCs) serving low-income and underserved populations and more than 600 of these HCs are located in rural areas. Disparities in quality of medical care in urban vs. rural areas exist but data on such differences between urban and rural HCs is limited in the literature. We examined whether urban and rural HCs differed in their performance on clinical quality measures before and after controlling for patient, organizational, and contextual characteristics.

Methods and findings

We used the 2017 Uniform Data System to examine performance on clinical quality measures between urban and rural HCs (n = 1,373). We used generalized linear regression models with the

SUBMITTER: Pourat N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7723285 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature