Health Care For Rural Areas

At 16 I experienced rural healthcare at its worst. My older brother and I were home alone when he started having severe stomach pain. I had never seen him cry in pain before and I was terrified. There isn’t a doctor in our hometown, so I drove him to the closest hospital, about 30 minutes away. Neither one of had a cell phone and the hospital staff wouldn’t allow me to use their phone to call my parents because they both had long-distance phone numbers. Hours after we arrived, someone in the waiting room let me use her cell phone to call my mom. When my parents got there, they took my brother to an exam room and then immediately back to surgery—his appendix had burst. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized this experience was not normal. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized similar experiences often happen in rural communities because of the need for primary care physicians and quality health care facilities.

Growing up on a farm in rural South Dakota, one learns to go without. Country living often entails going without the newest clothes, technology, or even modern necessities. Unfortunately, it can also include the postponement of medical intervention when health begins to fail. The impact rural health clinics have on alleviating this maldistribution is immense.

One area where access to care is a problem is in the rural communities. Healthcare professionals including physicians, nurse practitioners, and nurses all affect the quality and cost of care (Derksen, & Whelan, 2009). Going forward importance needs to be placed on using recourses more efficiently and effectively; these resources include but are not limited to tests, prescriptions,

Transportation is one of the largest barriers to health care access in rural communities. Fortunately, many interventions

While implementing Primary Health Care models, identical to those in metropolitan areas, in a rural setting is not practical, I feel there is an obvious need to improve primary health care in remote areas. This is due to the significant health gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, in rural and remote areas

Strategies that health care organization should consider to help with the challenges of the uninsured in rural areas include:

Americans living in rural areas have found out that getting access to quality health care is not only hard to obtain but very expensive. People who live in rural areas have the highest rates diseases that are chronic, poverty is higher, an having no insurance, and there are limitations to having access to primary care physicians to millions of rural Americans. Since the economy is going through a downturn, this has the potential to cause a rise in a number of access and health issues that are already causing problems in communities in rural areas.(HealthReform.Gov., 2012). This is where the new health care tax or the Patient Protection and Affordable Act of 2010 will play one of its greatest roles which is its main goal which is to allow coverage to all residents of the United States and thereby improving the delivery of needed health care to rural parts of America. (Becker & Dunn, 2012).

To respond to these legislative changes, there must be an increase in the professional workforce of rural health. The existing workforce will need extensive training to deal with the new aspects of the Affordable Care Act, and new professionals need to be encouraged to practice in rural areas. The following are potential methods for increasing the health care workforce of rural and frontier America:

People living in rural areas are experiencing highly limited excess to health care facilities either because they are not aware of the disease symptoms as a

Significant health disparities between rural and urban populations have been a major concern in the United States. One prominent factor contributing to the disparities is lack of access to quality care in rural areas which is closely associated with challenges faced by rural health care providers (National Rural Health Association, 2007). Rural hospitals are the key health care provider in rural areas, offering essential health care services to nearly 54 million people (American Hospital Association, 2006). They face a series of challenges such as workforce shortages, rise in health care costs, difficulty in finding access to capital, difficulty in

Quality healthcare in the more rural areas of the United States is not only getting more difficult to obtain, but difficult to afford. American citizens living in rural areas have the highest rates of chronic disease, higher poverty populations, less health insurance, and there is less access to primary care physicians. When the economy is at its lowest point it causes an increase in a number of access and health issues that have already had prior problems in communities and in rural areas, therefore the main goal of the national health care tax of 2010 was to allow coverage to all residents of the United States, and also by transferring necessary health care to places that were farther away, such as the

Rural Americans face an exclusive combination of issues that create disparities in health care that are not found in urban areas. Many complications met by healthcare providers and patients in rural arears are massively different than those located in urban areas. Financial factors, cultural and social variances, educational deficiencies, lack of acknowledgement by delegates and the absolute isolation of living in remote rural areas all combined to hinder rural Americans in their struggle to lead a normal, healthy life. Rural hospitals located in rural areas faces many disadvantages, such as; minimum resources, shortcoming or unprepared professionals, and financial disparities. Although many of these challenges could be solved

There are two principal conditions leading to physician shortages in rural communities according to Wright and colleagues. They are “demand-deficient”, meaning they have insufficient populations and resources to support a physician practice, they are “ambiance-challenged,” meaning they are isolated, lack quality services and amenities, and/or are in geographically unattractive settings, or a combination of the two sets of conditions. Inner-city physician shortages are a more recently recognized issue. They are affected by the same conditions, though the specifics are different (Wright, Andrilla, and Hart 2001).

Access to health care refers to the individual’s ability to obtain and use needed services (Ellis & Hartley, 2008). Access to health care affects a multitude of people. Uninsured, underinsured, elderly, lower socioeconomic class, minorities, and people that live in remote areas are at the highest risk for lack of access to health care. There are also economical and political roles that complicate access to health care. Access to health care is a multi-faceted concept involving geographic, economics, or sociocultural issues. With my extensive research on access to health care, I hope to provide influences regarding; who is affected by lack of access, geographic, economic, sociocultural access, and

A challenge that many rural communities are dealing with is the lack of primary care physicians, specialist, understaffed hospitals, and transportation. “Only about ten percent of physicians practice in rural America despite the fact that nearly one-fourth of the population lives in these areas” (National Rural Health Association [NHRA], n.d., para. 2). Although, there are programs designed to improve patients access to hospitals and physicians in rural areas, provider access for these patients remains a barrier. Technology can bridge some of the gaps of care for these patients and it can be beneficial in many ways. With enhanced technology, primary care physicians and patients will be able to have support, access to quality care, improvement in self-management skills, which ultimately, will improve a patient’s health. To assist physicians with delivery of optimal care and for patients to be able to go to scheduled wellness visits with physicians, a new approach to solving rural health barriers are needed.