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Rural Health
Resources by Topic: Service delivery models

Emerging Strategies to Ensure Access to Health Care Services: Emergency Medical Center
Provides an overview of the emergency medical center (EMC) model, which would allow struggling hospitals to convert to EMC status and provide emergency and outpatient services, without having to provide inpatient acute care services. Also outlines rural-specific federal policy proposals that seek to create similar hospital designations, with the goal of improving access to and the delivery of care in underserved communities.
Date: 11/2017
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: American Hospital Association
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Emerging Strategies to Ensure Access to Health Care Services: Frontier Health System
Discusses the challenges of providing care in frontier communities and offers solutions for improving access to and delivery of care. Proposes the creation of a frontier-specific accountable care organization (ACO), the Frontier Health System (FHS), that provides traditional ACO services along with transportation, swing beds, home-based care, expanded visiting nurse services, and more.
Date: 11/2017
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: American Hospital Association
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Emerging Strategies to Ensure Access to Health Care Services: Virtual Care Strategies
Discusses opportunities to use telehealth to improve healthcare access and delivery to vulnerable rural and urban communities. Includes recommendations from the American Hospital Association Task Force on Ensuring Access in Vulnerable Communities and details the benefits of telehealth services and potential policy solutions such as reimbursement, interaction of state and federal laws, broadband access, and federal research.
Date: 11/2017
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: American Hospital Association
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Meadville Medical Center: Care Coordination for Adults and Children
Describes the Meadville Medical Center Community Care Network (CCN), an interdisciplinary team of clinicians who focus on using care coordination to help patients manage chronic conditions and achieve their health and wellness goals. CCN's goal is to engage patients and encourage them to take ownership of their health, thereby reducing hospital readmissions, conserving resources, and improving the health of the population.
Date: 11/2017
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: American Hospital Association Rural Health Services
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Kalispell Regional Healthcare: Managing the Needs of Medically and Socially Complex Patients or Superutilizers
Details how Kalispell Regional Healthcare teamed with Mountain-Pacific Quality Health to introduce a modified transitional care model, which is designed to reduce service utilization and improve the health of high-cost, high-need patients. Initiative is part of a special innovations project through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and uses multidisciplinary "ReSource" teams to coordinate care and services across rural and underserved areas of Montana.
Date: 11/2017
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: American Hospital Association Rural Health Services
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Ensuring Access with a Hospital's Conversion to a Freestanding Emergency Department
Outlines Ellijay, Georgia-based North Georgia Medical Center's transition from a traditional community hospital to a freestanding emergency department (ED). Shares administrative, legal, and logistical challenges that, once overcome, resulted in Piedmont Mountainside Hospital Emergency Services - a successful, community-focused, freestanding ED.
Date: 11/2017
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: American Hospital Association Rural Health Services
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Foundations' Efforts To Improve Rural Health Care
Highlights several rural-specific, foundation-funded projects that are working to address challenges associated with rural health and healthcare. Includes examples in the following problem areas: access, care delivery, publications, quality of care, and rural philanthropy.
Citation: Health Affairs, 36(11), 2023-2025
Date: 11/2017
Type: Document
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Rural Health Care Services Outreach Program Supports Sustainable Change
Provides an overview of the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy's Rural Health Care Services Outreach Program and the impact several grantees have made in their communities. Discusses how the grantees planned their projects with the goal of sustaining services after the grant funding ends.
Author(s): Jenn Lukens
Citation: Rural Monitor
Date: 11/2017
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: Rural Health Information Hub
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Implementation and Dissemination of a Transition of Care Program for Rural Veterans: A Controlled Before and after Study
Highlights a study on the Veterans Health Administration's (VHA) nurse-led transitional care program. Study uses the Practical, Robust, Implementation, and Sustainability Model (PRISM) to evaluate the implementation's ability to support the transitions of rural veterans from hospital to home.
Author(s): Chelsea Leonard, Emily Lawrence, Marina McCreight, et al.
Citation: Implementation Science, 12, 123
Date: 10/2017
Type: Document
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Building Complex Care Programs: A Road Map for States
Provides guidance for state leaders who are working to establish and advance complex care programs, particularly for high-need, high-cost Medicaid patients. Shares lessons learned from the National Governors Association's work with multiple state and local complex care initiatives. Includes program details and considerations specific to rural areas.
Author(s): Sandra Wilkniss, Sonia Pandit, Flora Arabo, Sally Malone, Hemi Tewarson
Date: 10/2017
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: National Governors Association
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