November 16, 2022
Palliative care, designed to treat the symptoms of a serious illness at any stage of diagnosis, is associated with better outcomes like higher patient satisfaction. Despite these benefits, many people in rural communities cannot access these services or don't know what palliative care is. The South Dakota Palliative Care Network is working to increase knowledge of palliative care among rural healthcare professionals, nursing students, and community members.
October 26, 2022
After a 1965 public law created the Medicare and Medicaid programs, many rural residents insured by these government health programs were unable to access care. This challenge was remedied by another public law: the Rural Health Clinic Services Act of 1977. Using a historical framework, rural health policy experts, researchers, and clinicians reviewed the Act's impact on outpatient healthcare delivery in rural America.
October 26, 2022
Over 5,200 rural organizations participate in the Rural Health Clinics program, a reimbursement model dedicated to rural low-volume healthcare delivery and now in its 45th year. The National Association of Rural Health Clinics — in its 30th year — is a membership organization that emerged as the program increased its participants. Bill Finerfrock, association cofounder and its recently retired executive director, shared the group's origin story as well as touchpoints from his own career.
October 5, 2022
To keep 24/7 urgent care available in Maine's Moose River Valley, a new pilot program lets paramedics take shifts staffing the local health center after-hours and on weekends.
August 17, 2022
A partnership between a Federally Qualified Health Center and the local ambulance district in Washington County, Missouri lets chronically ill patients access preventive care from the comfort of home.
August 3, 2022
Rural healthcare delivery experts continue to emphasize the critical need for rural workforce. Using uniquely designed combined baccalaureate/medical degree programs, two university-based medical education teams shared not only the successes in training and placing physicians in rural areas — but the unique impact their service-oriented students and programs have on their academic environment.
June 29, 2022
Dr. Luis Padilla, Associate Administrator for HRSA's Bureau of Health Workforce and Director of the National Health Service Corps (NHSC), discusses the NHSC's 50th anniversary and the organization's many initiatives to bring healthcare professionals to underserved communities.
April 13, 2022
The greatest opportunity to tell the rural healthcare delivery story is an opportunity often missed — and that opportunity involves translating clinical documentation into medical codes. In addition to describing how the story and quality of clinical care gets translated from words into alphanumeric numbers, medical coding experts also pointed to aligned efforts to familiarize those in graduate medical education settings with the impact of their clinical documentation.
March 9, 2022
Health literacy experts share that as healthcare delivery moves from bedside to webside, new opportunities for health literacy education arise. Emphasizing the need to swap medical jargon for plain language, educators outlined best practices for teaching health literacy principles to healthcare profession trainees.
February 16, 2022
By leveraging federal COVID-related funding, the Quapaw Nation now serves its local residents with a new community paramedicine program. Current program data indicates that it's bringing significant cost savings, along with valuable information for future local healthcare delivery decision-making. Most importantly, the program is also proving to be widely acceptable to community members.
