Industries
Data Analytics for Rural Hospitals
Rural hospitals face financial pressures that generic analytics tools weren't built to address. We've analyzed 25 years of hospital financial data across entire states and built analytics specifically for Critical Access Hospitals, SORH offices, and rural health networks. Grant-fundable. Mostly virtual. Designed for small teams.
Rural Hospitals Operate Under Different Rules
A 25-bed Critical Access Hospital in a county with 15,000 residents faces constraints that a 500-bed urban medical center never thinks about:
- ✓The CFO is also the compliance officer. And sometimes the IT department. There is no analytics team and no budget for one.
- ✓Volume is low but fixed costs aren't. A 10% drop in admissions doesn't reduce your building, your equipment, or your minimum staffing requirements. It just makes your per-patient cost unsustainable.
- ✓Community health is hospital health. When your county's uninsured rate is 18% and the median household income is $32,000, your payer mix is a direct reflection of the community's economic reality.
- ✓Closure isn't theoretical. Nearly 200 rural hospitals have closed since 2005. The communities they served don't get a replacement — they get a 45-minute drive to the next facility.
Standard analytics consulting assumes a certain scale: a data team to maintain dashboards, an IT department to manage integrations, a budget for enterprise software licenses. Rural hospitals have none of these.
We built our approach specifically for this reality.
Built for Rural Hospitals, Not Adapted From Enterprise
Financial Benchmarking Against True Peers
Compare your hospital's operating margin, days cash on hand, occupancy, and payer mix against hospitals of similar size, designation, and region — not against urban health systems that share nothing in common with your operation.
AHEAD Readiness Assessment
Determine whether your hospital is eligible for CMS's AHEAD model, identify what data infrastructure you'd need to participate, and model what global budget payments would look like for your facility.
Grant Eligibility Mapping
We track eligibility across federal and state grant programs (HRSA Flex, CMS, USDA, Appalachian Regional Commission, RHTP, and others) and identify which programs your hospital qualifies for but isn't receiving.
Community Health Context
Your hospital doesn't exist in isolation. We connect hospital financial data with CDC Social Vulnerability Index, County Health Rankings, and population health indicators for your county — showing the relationship between community health and hospital viability.
Grant-Fundable Pricing
Phase 1 starts at $10-20K and is explicitly eligible for HRSA Flex Program Area 2 funding. Your State Office of Rural Health administers these funds. We help you make the case.
Virtual Delivery, Small-Team Friendly
Most engagements are 100% virtual. Dashboards are designed for the people who need the information (CFO, CEO, board members), not for analysts you don't have. No enterprise software licenses required.
We Start With What's Already Available
Before we touch your internal systems, we've already built a detailed profile of your hospital using public data sources:
- ✓CMS Cost Reports (HCRIS) — operating margin, days cash on hand, occupancy, revenue, expenses
- ✓Hospital Financial Surveys — 25 years of financial and utilization trends
- ✓CDC Social Vulnerability Index — community-level vulnerability across 4 dimensions
- ✓County Health Rankings — population health indicators for your county
- ✓State hospital financial need rankings — where your hospital falls relative to peers in your state
- ✓Grant program eligibility — federal and state programs mapped to your hospital's characteristics
This baseline is available free through RHT Compass.
Rural Healthcare by the Numbers
0
Hospitals Tracked Across 50 States
0
Hospital Desert Counties Identified
0
Rural Hospital Closures Since 2005
0
Critical Access Hospitals Monitored
Serving the Rural Health Ecosystem
- ✓Individual hospitals: CEOs and CFOs who need operational visibility without an analytics team
- ✓State Offices of Rural Health: Statewide portfolio views, Flex Program reporting, hospital financial monitoring
- ✓Hospital associations: Peer benchmarking across member hospitals, conference presentations, member services
- ✓Federally Qualified Health Centers: Community health data, hospital closure impact analysis, service area planning
- ✓District health departments: County-level health indicators, hospital capacity analysis, grant opportunity identification
- ✓State tax credit programs and rural health initiatives: Financial trend context for donor communications and hospital needs assessments
Assess Your AHEAD Readiness
The CMS AHEAD model launches in 2026. How prepared is your hospital for the transition from fee-for-service to a global budget? Take our free 5-minute assessment.
Frequently Asked Questions
We're a Critical Access Hospital with 25 beds. Is this designed for us?
Yes. Our approach was specifically designed for small, resource-constrained rural hospitals. You don't need a data team, an enterprise analytics platform, or a large IT department. We build dashboards for the people who actually run the hospital — the CFO, the CEO, the board — not for analysts.
Can our SORH fund this through Flex?
In most cases, yes. HRSA Flex Program Area 2 (Financial & Operational Improvement) explicitly covers data analytics and operational improvement for rural hospitals. Your State Office of Rural Health administers these funds and determines local priorities. We can help prepare the request.
What data do you need from us?
Phase 1 starts with public data only — we don't need anything from you initially. When we move to Phase 2 (connecting internal systems), we work with whatever EHR, financial, and workforce systems you have. Common rural hospital systems include CPSI/TruBridge, MEDITECH, athenahealth, and Epic Community Connect.
How is this different from what our state hospital association provides?
Hospital associations typically provide aggregate benchmarking (your margin vs. the state average). We provide hospital-specific operational analytics: your margin trend over 25 years, your community's health indicators, your grant eligibility, your AHEAD readiness gaps, and dashboards your leadership team uses for daily decisions. We complement association benchmarking, not replace it.
What if our hospital closes or converts to a different model?
We track hospital status changes, closures, mergers, and conversions. For hospitals considering conversion (from acute care to rural emergency hospital, for example), we can model the financial impact using your historical data and peer comparisons.
Insights for Rural Healthcare
Business Intelligence
Rural Hospital Analytics: Making the Case With the Data You Already Have
Rural hospitals have less data infrastructure but more at stake. Here's how to build analytical capabilities with limited resources.
Data Strategy
AHEAD Model Readiness: A Practical Guide for Hospital Leadership
CMS's AHEAD model ties hospital payments to total cost of care. Here's what hospital leaders need to know about data readiness before the transition.
Related Industries
Start With a Conversation
Tell us about your hospital. We'll pull your public data, show you what we already know about your financial position and community health context, and discuss what a deeper engagement would look like. No cost, no commitment.