On August 27, 2015, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released its latest Chartbook on Rural Health Care. With rural populations as one of ten priorities for AHRQ research an quality measurement, the chartbook puts a rural lens on more than 250 measures – including access to health care, affordability, and leading causes of morbidity and mortality – found in the agency’s National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report (QDR) released earlier in 2015. The chartbook data show that, compared to residents of suburbs, residents of rural areas received lower quality of care for more than a quarter of the measures tracked. In addition, residents of rural areas experienced lower access to care for 40 percent of measures compared with those living in suburbs.
