News and Announcements

Brian Ashpole, ICAHN Data and Grant Project Coordinator, (front row, second from left) along with Kristen Nolen, Director of the Center for Rural Health at IDPH, (front row, third from left) and the other MBQIP award recipients.

The Illinois Critical Access Hospitals have been recognized nationally for their excellent performance in the Medicare Beneficiary Quality Improvement Project (MBQIP).

The Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network (ICAHN) has been recognized by the National Rural Health Resource Center (The Center) as a Top 10 State in Flex Program performance for their MBQIP. The MBQIP program is the quality program that is designed to be specifically tailored to meet the needs of the critical access hospitals across the country.

Critical access hospitals are small, rural hospitals that meet specific criteria to hold the designation from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid services (CMS).

This award is given to states that have achieved the highest reporting rates for quality measures and performance improvement in those measures over the past 12 months.

Brian Ashpole, ICAHN Data and Grant Project Coordinator, attended the 2024 Flex Program Reverse Site Visit in Washington, DC last week and accepted the award on behalf of ICAHN.

“It was special to have Illinois recognized as a top 10 state program in the nation for MBQIP. The award reflects the tremendous dedication possessed by Illinois Critical Access Hospitals in the high-quality care they provide to the communities they serve,” Ashpole said.

The Illinois Department of Public Health—Center for Rural Health and ICAHN use the funds from the Medicare Flexibility Grant (Flex) to provide support and technical assistance to Illinois critical access hospitals in many areas.

One focus of the grant is to improve the individual hospitals’ quality programs.

Illinois uses Flex grant funds to provide focused training on various quality concepts, workshops for infection control, providing learning collaboratives designed to help hospitals implement new quality initiatives, and provide scholarship funds for additional quality training for hospital quality staff.

“Many critical hospitals have been able to benefit from the programs that have been developed with the help of Flex grant funding, and we are very proud to be in a position where we can help provide excellent care to our rural communities,” said Karissa Turner, ICAHN Board President and CEO of Wabash General Hospital.

Located in Princeton, IL, ICAHN is a network of 60 small, rural hospitals dedicated to strengthening the operations of its member hospitals through collaboration. The organization is composed of Illinois hospitals who have earned critical access hospital designation by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and is recognized nationally for its work with rural healthcare, administering several state, federal, and private healthcare programs.