- Telehealth Study Recruiting Veterans Now
- USDA Delivers Immediate Relief to Farmers, Ranchers and Rural Communities Impacted by Recent Disasters
- Submit Nominations for Partnership for Quality Measurement (PQM) Committees
- Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation of the Medicare Program (Executive Order 14192) - Request for Information
- Dr. Mehmet Oz Shares Vision for CMS
- CMS Refocuses on its Core Mission and Preserving the State-Federal Medicaid Partnership
- Social Factors Help Explain Worse Cardiovascular Health among Adults in Rural Vs. Urban Communities
- Reducing Barriers to Participation in Population-Based Total Cost of Care (PB-TCOC) Models and Supporting Primary and Specialty Care Transformation: Request for Input
- Secretary Kennedy Renews Public Health Emergency Declaration to Address National Opioid Crisis
- Secretary Kennedy Renews Public Health Emergency Declaration to Address National Opioid Crisis
- 2025 Marketplace Integrity and Affordability Proposed Rule
- Rural America Faces Growing Shortage of Eye Surgeons
- NRHA Continues Partnership to Advance Rural Oral Health
- Comments Requested on Mobile Crisis Team Services: An Implementation Toolkit Draft
- Q&A: What Are the Challenges and Opportunities of Small-Town Philanthropy?
Philly Fed Assesses Small Business Conditions in Region
For the third year in a row, more than half of small businesses in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware said their financial conditions were poor or fair. Their top operational challenges? Hiring or keeping qualified staff. Reaching customers or growing sales. Supply chain issues.
Distilling data from the Fed’s national 2024 Report on Employer Firms: Findings from the 2023 Small Business Credit Survey, these briefs offer a view into business conditions in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the Philadelphia metro, and the Third District states overall (Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania).
Additional findings from the survey for Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania:
- More firms said they experienced no change in their revenues between 2022 and 2023 than did between 2021 and 2022.
- Fewer firms carried debt, although about the same number of firms applied for loans, lines of credit, or merchant cash advances compared with the previous year.
Dental Publication Focuses on Integration of Behavioral Health and Oral Health
The Journal of the California Dental Association published a special issue focused on the integration of behavioral health and oral health. The issue discuses the bi-directional relationship, a framework for integrating behavioral health and oral health in predoctoral education, and resource to support the integration of behavioral health into dental settings.
New Resource: Using Public Health Hygienists in Health Centers
The Pennsylvania Association of Community Health Centers (PACHC) and the Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health (PORH) created a resource for health centers interesting in adding a public health dental hygiene practitioner (PHDHP) to their team. The resource includes guidance on what PHDHPs are and are not permitted to do and information on employing a PHDHP in federally qualified health centers (FQHCs).
Closing of Rural Hospitals Leaves Towns With Unhealthy Real Estate
In March 2021, Jellico, TN, a town of about 2,000 residents in the hills of east Tennessee, lost its hospital, a 54-bed acute care facility. Campbell County, where Jellico is located, ranks 90th of Tennessee’s 95 counties in health outcomes and has a poverty rate almost double the national average, so losing its health care cornerstone sent ripple effects through the region.
“Oh, my word,” said Tawnya Brock, a health care quality manager and a Jellico resident. “That hospital was not only the health care lifeline to this community. Economically and socially, it was the center of the community.”
Since 2010, 149 rural hospitals in the United States have either closed or stopped providing in-patient care, according to the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina. Tennessee has recorded the second-most closures of any state, with 15, and the most closures per capita. Texas has the highest number of rural hospital closures, with 25.
Each time a hospital closes there are health care and economic ripples across a community. When Jellico Medical Center closed, some 300 jobs went with it. Restaurants and other small businesses in Jellico also have gone under, said Brock, who is a member of the Rural Health Association of Tennessee’s legislative committee. And the town must contend with the empty husk of a hospital.
Dozens of small communities are grappling with what to do with hospitals that have closed. Sheps Center researchers have found that while a closure negatively affects the local economy, those effects can be softened if the building is converted to another type of health care facility.
CMS Updates Information on New Hospital Price Transparency Requirements Commencing July 1, 2024
PRISM Study Summary: Preparing Behavioral Health Clinicians for Success and Retention in Rural Safety Net Practices
This study assesses how, among behavioral health clinicians working in rural safety net practices, the amount of exposure to care in rural underserved communities received during training relates to confidence in skills important in their work settings, successes in jobs and communities, and anticipated retention.
This study summary provides a quick overview of the study published by the Journal of Rural Health.
FEMA Publishes National Risk Index
The National Risk Index is a dataset and online tool to help illustrate the United States communities most at risk for 18 natural hazards. It was designed and built by FEMA in close collaboration with various stakeholders and partners in academia; local, state and federal government; and private industry.
The Risk Index leverages available source data for natural hazard and community risk factors to develop a baseline risk measurement for each United States county and Census tract.
Quality of EMS Care Varies Widely Across the U.S.
From AXIOS
The level of care patients receive in a medical emergency varies widely based on where 911 is being dialed.
Why it matters: A first-of-its-kind study of emergency medical service systems’ performance across the country points to opportunities to improve patient care when the pressure is on.
What they did: Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reviewed more than 26 million responses from nearly 9,700 EMS agencies in 2019.
- They assessed how those agencies performed on safety and clinical quality measures that had been outlined by a nonprofit industry organization that year.
- The researchers said it’s a shift from looking primarily at response times to determine EMS performance, which they say is an imprecise metric for most calls.
What they found: Agencies largely responding in rural areas were less likely to treat low blood sugar or improve trauma patients’ pain, researchers found.
- They were also more likely to use lights and sirens unnecessarily, which other studies have found raises the risk of crashes.
- Delivery of time-sensitive treatment also varied during EMS calls. For instance, 4 in 10 kids with wheezing or asthma attacks didn’t get breathing treatment, and about 1 in 3 suspected stroke patients didn’t have a stroke assessment documented.
What they’re saying: “We have to move away from solely looking at response times and start looking at performance that directly impacts the people we are meant to treat,” said lead author Michael Redlener, an associate professor of emergency medicine.
Updated Uniform Data Set Crosswalk Released
The Rural Health Value team is pleased to announce the release of an updated version of the 2024 Uniform Data Set (UDS) Measure Crosswalk to Other Quality Reporting Programs .
The Crosswalk highlights alignment between Uniform Data Set (UDS) measures and other quality reporting programs. It is intended to help health centers identify which UDS measures are being utilized by other programs such as CMS Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), and the CMS Quality Payment Program (QPP).
Related resources on the Rural Health Value website:
- The Catalog of Value-Based Initiatives for Rural Providers. The catalog summarizes rural-relevant, value-based programs currently or recently implemented by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), primarily by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and its Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). Its purpose is to help rural leaders and communities identify HHS value-based programs appropriate for rural participation.
- Rural Innovation Profile: Iowa Community Health Centers and Value-Based. The Iowa Primary Care Association (Iowa PCA), IowaHealth+, and INConcertCare collaborate as a network to leverage resources in support of community health centers (CHCs) across Iowa. The three organizations have established a common strategic plan that supports a clinically integrated network for Medicaid and Medicare value-based care (VBC) contracting. This profile provides an overview and background information on how the partnership supports value-based care and planned next steps.
‘Too Many Old People’: A Rural Pennsylvania Town Reckons with Population Loss
“We already lost our bank,” Goldthwaite said as he took a break from trimming the grass around headstones. “We lost our liquor store, and we may be about to lose our high school.”
Across rural Pennsylvania, there is a deepening sense of fear about the future as population loss accelerates. The sharp decline has put the state at the forefront of a national discussion on the viability of the small towns that have long been a pillar of American culture.
America’s rural population began contracting about a decade ago, according to statistics drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau.
A whopping 81 percent of rural counties had more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis by a University of New Hampshire demographer. Experts who study the phenomena say the shrinking baby boomer population and younger residents having smaller families and moving elsewhere for jobs are fueling the trend.