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Rural Health Information Hub

Healthcare Access in Rural Communities – Resources

Selected recent or important resources focusing on Healthcare Access in Rural Communities.

Health, Work, and Care in Rural America
Report examining rural access to paid leave from work, the economic impacts of limited access to paid leave, and distances to hospital-based and skilled nursing care. Offers a broad view of rural economic and health dynamics, travel burdens to access hospital-based care, and presents policy recommendations to address paid leave as a social determinant of health.
Author(s): Vicki Shabo, Hannah Friedman
Date: 11/2022
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: New America
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Health Care Access and Use Among Adults With and Without Vision Impairment: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2018
Analyzes insurance status, access to usual source of care, healthcare utilization, and unmet healthcare needs due to cost among adults with vision impairment. Utilizes 2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data to examine 426,302 adults by age, sex, race/ethnicity, poverty level, health status and behaviors, disability type, U.S. region and territory, and metropolitan or nonmetropolitan status.
Author(s): Qi Cheng, Catherine A. Okoro, Isabel Mendez, et al.
Citation: Preventing Chronic Disease, 19
Date: 11/2022
Type: Document
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An Insurance Profile of Rural America: Chartbook
Provides information on the health insurance status of rural Americans under the age of 65. Describes trends in sources of health insurance coverage, insurance market dynamics in rural communities, and trends in out-of-pocket expenditures. Compares metro and non-metro data on insurance coverage by region and sociodemographic characteristics; the relationship of health status to insurance coverage; affordability; trends in Marketplace and Medicare Advantage coverage offerings at the county level; and more.
Author(s): Timothy McBride, Abigail Barker, Emily Hernandez, et al.
Date: 10/2022
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
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Health Care Access Among Self-Employed Workers in Nonmetropolitan Counties
Webinar recording highlighting a May 2022 report that examines access to healthcare for self-employed workers, their families, and their households in rural areas. Utilizes 2014-2020 data to discuss health insurance coverage and affordability, availability of healthcare services, and changes in work, income, health status, and healthcare access.
Additional links: Presentation Slides
Author(s): Elizabeth A. Dobis, Jessica E. Todd
Date: 10/2022
Type: Video/Multimedia
Sponsoring organization: North Central Regional Center for Rural Development
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Nowhere to Go: Maternity Care Deserts Across the U.S. 2022
Explores maternal healthcare access and provides county-level U.S. maps that show maternity care deserts, hospitals and birth centers that offer obstetric (OB) care, distribution of OB providers, percentage of women without health insurance, percentage of births covered by Medicaid, and more. Includes rural versus urban characteristics of maternity care deserts as well as access and policy discussions specific to rural areas.
Date: 10/2022
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: March of Dimes
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'Filling the Cracks': How a Rural Maine Community Kept its 24/7 Urgent Care Open with Paramedics
Features a pilot program serving rural Maine where paramedics take shifts staffing the local health center after-hours and on weekends.
Author(s): Gretel Kauffman
Citation: Rural Monitor
Date: 10/2022
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: Rural Health Information Hub
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Improving Rural Maternal Health Care through Network Models: Summary of the RMOMS Program 2021 Cohort
Describes the Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies (RMOMS) program supporting increased access to maternal healthcare in rural communities and improvement in maternal and neonatal outcomes. Summarizes three RMOMS programs from the 2021 Cohort - Families First: Rural Maternity Health Collaborative (Minnesota), RMOM-Southeast Missouri Partnership, and West Virginia RMOMS Collaborative. Identifies their maternal health service area, network partners, and goals and strategies for improving healthcare access and outcomes.
Date: 09/2022
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: Health Resources and Services Administration
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Audiology, Medicine, and Pharmacy Interprofessional Preliminary Interviews and Discussions: Improving Hearing Health Care in Rural Alabama
Results of a study to determine the feasibility of interprofessional collaboration among physicians and audiologists and pharmacists and audiologists, to improve access and affordability of hearing health care in rural communities. Based on information from online surveys and virtual discussion groups with 16 family physicians and medicine residents at the University of Alabama and 15 pharmacists who worked in independently owned community pharmacies in Alabama.
Author(s): Emma B. Brothers, Marcia J. Hay-McCutcheon, Peter J. Hughes, M. Louanne Friend
Citation: American Journal of Audiology, 31(3), 656-668
Date: 09/2022
Type: Document
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Health Insurance Marketplaces: Issuer Participation Trends in Non-Metropolitan Places, 2014-22
Policy brief examining the changes in Health Insurance Marketplace (HIM) plan issuers from 2014-2022. Presents statistics on the average number of issuers per county in each year for metropolitan, micropolitan, and noncore counties and by region.
Author(s): Eliot Jost, Abigail Barker, Leah Kemper, et al.
Date: 08/2022
Type: Document
Sponsoring organization: RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
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Rural-Urban Disparities in Place of Death in Hematologic Malignancies in the United States, 2003 to 2019
Examines place of death (POD) by home, hospice, or nursing/medical facility due to hematologic malignancy mortalities that occurred between 2013 and 2019. Analyzes 1,009,717 deaths recorded in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER) database and breaks down POD by large metropolitan, medium/small metropolitan, and rural metropolitan. Discusses disparities in urban and rural community access to end-of-life resources.
Author(s): S. M. Qasim Hussaini, Amanda L. Blackford, Arjun Gupta, et al.
Citation: Blood Advances, 6(16), 4731-4734
Date: 08/2022
Type: Document
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Last Updated: 11/15/2024