In its most recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported an increase in chemical exposures related to cleaners and disinfectants for the period January-March 2020. Last week, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services announced $5 million to support Poison Control Centers.
Read the report here.
A new rural policy brief is available from the RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis authored by Erin Mobley, PhD; Fred Ullrich, BA; Redwan Bin Abdul Baten, MPH; Mina Shrestha, MPH and Keith Mueller, PhD. This policy brief examines the composition of the local health care workforce before and after rural hospital closure to reveal any associations with discontinuation of inpatient services in rural communities.
Please click here to read the brief.
A Research & Policy Brief is available from the Rural Telehealth Research Center.
To address the many challenges in treating behavioral health in rural areas, the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) established the Evidence-Based Tele-Behavioral Health Network Program (EB THNP) in 2018, funding 14 grantees, and the Substance Abuse Treatment Telehealth Network Grant Program (SAT TNGP) in 2017, funding 3 grantees. Concurrently, the Rural Telehealth Research Center (RTRC) worked cooperatively with FORHP to establish data collection protocols and tools on a set of measures that could be used for a cross-grantee evaluation of behavioral health services over their funding periods. This brief details multi-project work to identify the standardized set of measures appropriate to behavioral health, create an Excel-based tool – termed the Behavioral-Telehealth Evidence Collection (B-TEC) Tool- and begin to systematically collect data from the grantees.
Please click here to read the brief.
The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) is a think tank combining ideas and solutions from both parties. In this report, the BPC’s Rural Health Task Force makes policy recommendations to stabilize rural health care in the current emergency and the long term.
Rural hospital executives are tasked with broader and more general functions than urban hospital executives who have greater resources to employ area-specific specialists. As such, rural hospital executives have developed and fine-tuned a different skill set than urban hospital executives. This study found four major themes from the many identified skill sets of the Critical Access Hospital (CAH) CEOs interviewed. These “best practices” likely helped contribute to the positive status of the CAHs interviewed and could also be a resource from which other CAHs could find utility.
For this study, the Flex Monitoring Team interviewed 14 CAH CEOs about their perspectives and experiences leading CAHs with a low risk of financial distress despite their operating environment. CEOs described their experiences with financial and quality issues, leadership roles, performance measurement, policy challenges, and community health.
This brief summarizes best practices related to tasks of daily operation, forecasting, and community health outcomes and to craft advice for other CAH CEOs.
This paper may be accessed here or on the Flex Monitoring Team website.
By Brian Whitacre and Roberto Gallardo
A new dataset gives researchers a different way to measure internet use. What they’ve found is that when the number of “online ventures” goes up, so does the county’s prosperity.
A new series of policy briefs coauthored by National Rural Health Association member George Pink examines the geographic variability in profitability of urban and rural hospitals; rural hospitals with long-term unprofitability; profitability of urban and rural hospitals by Medicare payment classification; and the broader context of rural hospitals and profitability. Another policy brief coauthored by NRHA members Xi Zhu and Keith Mueller looks at rural hospital participation in Medicare accountable care organizations, summarizing national and regional rates of rural hospital participation and identifying factors associated with ACO participation. Finally, new research coauthored by NRHA member Mark Holmes examines patterns of hospital bypass and inpatient care seeking by rural residents, as hospital bypass, or the tendency of local rural residents to not seek care at their closest hospital, is thought to be a contributing factor for rural hospital closure.
This sourcebook provides detailed descriptions of 32 rural quality improvement initiatives funded through the Small Health Care Provider Quality Improvement grant program during the 2016-2019 grant period. Initiatives focused on enhancing chronic disease management, increasing patient and caregiver engagement, improving quality of care, and better health outcomes. Read more here.
This resource reports on health insurance coverage in the U.S. in 2018 and changes between 2017 and 2018, as well as changes between 2013 and 2018. It includes maps showing county-level uninsured rates. Read more here.
Additional links: Visualizations and Reference Maps
This article presents a study on the link between the opioid epidemic and children’s educational outcomes. It evaluates community-level resources for handling the opioid crisis and how that correlates with educational outcomes, specifically in rural and underserved areas. Read more here.
