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Five North Dakota Hospitals Named Among Top 20 in Nation

Sep 22, 2026

Five Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) in North Dakota have been named to the Top 20 CAHs for 2026 and received the awards during a ceremony at the National Rural Health Association’s CAH Conference in September in Kansas City, Missouri.

The determining factors for the Top 20 CAHs are based on the Chartis Rural Hospital Performance INDEX and its eight indices of performance: inpatient market share, outpatient market share, quality, outcomes, patient perspective, cost, charge, and finance.

Jody Ward

"We are proud to see so many North Dakota CAHs selected in the Top 20 in each category," said Jody Ward, grant program director of the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Program and the North Dakota CAH Quality Network. "The hospitals in our state pride themselves on patient care, quality, innovation, and keeping costs low."

Forty best practice designations were also given to facilities that achieved success in one of two key areas of performance:

  1. Quality: A rating of hospital performance based on the percentile rank across rural-relevant process of care measures
  2. Patient perspective: A rating of hospital performance based on the percentile rank across all 10 Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) domains

Top 20 Critical Access Hospitals

Best Practice Recipients – Quality

CAH Quality Network

All of the designated hospitals belong to the North Dakota CAH Quality Network, at the Center for Rural Health, housed within the University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences. The Network serves as a common place for the state's 36 CAHs to share best practices, tools, and resources related to providing quality of care. The Network supports the quality improvement activities of its members and assists them with the Medicare Conditions of Participation.