A hospital-randomized controlled trial of an educational quality improvement intervention in rural and small community hospitals in Texas following implementation of information technology.

Rural and small community hospitals typically have few resources and little experience with quality improvement (QI) and, on average, demonstrate poorer quality of care than larger facilities. Formalized QI education shows promise in improving quality, but little is known about its effect in rural and small community hospitals. The authors describe a randomized controlled trial assigning 47 rural and small community Texas hospitals to such a program (n = 23) or to the control group (n = 24), following provision of a Web-based quality benchmarking and case review tool.