Providing Health Care For Rural Areas

Rural Oklahoma is filled with small farm communities and small towns. Towns where everyone knows everyone and family is of major importance. Pond Creek Oklahoma is one of those communities with a census approximately 856 residents located in Grant County (Pond Creek, Oklahoma, 2015). This town has strong Christian roots and you get the feel of family, football, and love. There is a small variety of businesses and churches but the primary source of income for the community is agricultural. It isn’t uncommon to see tractors making their way down the highway during planting times and combines during harvest. One thing that the town and its citizens lack is access to health care. There are no medical facilities in the town such

The negative impacts of limited or lack transportation services on rural population include rescheduled or missed appointments, delayed care and missed or delayed medication use (Syed, Gerber & Sharp, 2013). Mattson (2010) claimed that the delay in medical appointment for rural clients not only resulted in missing the care at the time they most need it, but it also can be more serious and costly

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.

Living on a small farm in Montrose, SD, I have seen the hardships that can go along with living in rural areas. With two parents who commute 30 minutes to work everyday, it was always an almost impossible task to get medical attention for any illness. Experiencing these hardships has helped me gain a great respect for rural clinics, and opened my eyes to the opportunities a rural clinic offers to future medical professionals, such as, myself.

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

The Australian government realized that there is something different about rural health that requires special actions. This realization was the reason for the development of rural health policies. The aim of the policies is to insure ‘equivalent’ access to good health and health care for people in rural places. The implementation of this policies was highly challenged by different factors including political and community reactions and therefore the outcome of the policy is affected also (Farmer & Currie, 2009) .

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

The morbidity and mortality rates are higher in the rural areas than in the urban areas partly due to the high rates of chronic illness and poor health behaviors. The health care disparities of the rural population have led to negative bias. The bias within the health care field have affected clinical judgment and decision making (Blair, Steiner, & Havranek, 2011). Bias further lead and exponentiate health disparities, continuing the trends and challenges among the rural population. Economic status is another negative impact of health care disparities among the rural population. Their low economic status continues to effect the availability of resources to improve the health care infrastructure and specialization. Health reform is needed to improve the effects of the health care disparities and their negative impacts on the rural

Research requires the nursing scientists to explore the context of problems encountered. In order to identify targeted directions to hone efforts researchers must first identify the variables to be studied. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the variables of Rural and Access to Mental Health Providers.

However, a similar study conducted by Samuel G. Burgiss, et. al (1997) has been conducted regarding telemedicine and dermatology patients from rural communities. The objectives of the studies are similar being that they both aim to afford an alternative method of care to patients who cannot easily access healthcare from their rural communities. The social determinants of health play a major role in how readily people can access healthcare, and researchers identified this gap in rural communities. Through this study, 87 patients were seen via telemedicine for a 17-month period (Burgiss et. al, 1997). The study confirms that telemedicine is a cost effective and resourceful option for patients who cannot easily access health care for necessary routine check-ups. Although the two conditions are dissimilar, the outward goals and the expected results are similar to that of the Telemedicine Project. This study reassures the importance of the telemedicine project because there are also lupus patients from low income, rural communities like southwest Georgia who lack the resources to obtain efficient

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

Living remotely means that not having adequate health products, facilities and services. The lack of medical service is low due to people being reluctant (nurses and doctors) in relocating to rural or remote areas due to the distance and location. Individuals are less likely to seek medical assistance of any anomalies such as angina, moles and lumps, when the traveling times are inconsiderably extensive and the poor infrastructure of health facilities enhance the process taking far too long as well as long waiting hours. For example, women are less likely to go for breast screening for any sign of breast cancer due to the situation of health services and facilities which they deem it to be too much of an inconvenience. People living in rural or remote areas have a higher death rates due to injuries from road vehicle

Often the biggest barriers to accessing healthcare are cost and location. Lower income individuals just do not have the resources to have optimal healthcare, or cannot take the time away from employment to deal with health issues. One potential solution to help with these problems could be “telehealth.” Telehealth allows a lower level healthcare practitioner to communicate with a physician or specialists when necessary. Remote rural areas use a Physician Assistant or a Nurse Practitioner on location in remote areas.

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.