Session: Creating a Coherent Continuum of Healthcare for Rural Areas

The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

3189.0: Monday, November 11, 2002: 12:30 PM-2:00 PM

Oral

Creating a Coherent Continuum of Healthcare for Rural Areas

The task of constructing a continuum of healthcare for residents of rural areas is fraught with a unique set of pitfalls and obstacles not encountered in urban and suburban settings. Personnel, financial resources, and support systems are all at a premium, and the ability to support these populations as close to home as possible is made more challenging by the need to connect their members with a full range of services to meet their individual needs. With a creative use of federal and state funding resources, the utilization of nurses and mid-level practitioners in rural settings, the conversion of more institutions to Critical Access Hospital (CAH) status, and the successful recruiting of specialists to complement the baseline medical staff in the CAH's, rural residents can come to expect a coherent and comprehensive healthcare system which includes all those services for which fiscal and physical plant constraints are not prohibitive.

Learning Objectives: Refer to the individual abstracts for learning objectives

See individual abstracts for presenting author's disclosure statement and author's information.

Organizer(s):

Christopher Allan Knowles, MPA

Presider(s):

Christopher Allan Knowles, MPA

12:30 PM

Practical Considerations in the Evaluation of Rural Public Health Efforts
Patricia Charles, DrPH, Caroline Ford, MPH

12:50 PM

Healthcare Use and Cost of a Medicare Voucher and Health Promotion Nurse in Rural Areas
Jurgis Karuza, PhD, Brenda Wamsley, MSW, Gerald M. Eggert, PhD, Bruce Friedman, PhD

1:10 PM

Defining Critical Access Hospital service areas and measuring patient outflow to other hospitals
Ruth Raines-Eudy, PhD