Rural Community And Health Care

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.

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).

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

However, contrary to the expected success of these provisions involving healthcare coverage to rural areas, healthcare coverage to rural areas did not change as much as expected due to several other factors. The same judicial decision in June 2012 that deemed one of the act’s most controversial provisions constitutional also dealt a large setback to extending healthcare coverage in rural areas. The decision ruled that expansion of Medicaid, a state government, become optional for states because Congress had “exceeded its constitutional authority by coercing states into participating in the expansion by threatening them with the loss of existing federal payments” (Supreme Court). Two years later, twenty-four states were not implementing the Medicaid expansion. The states that are not expanding their Medicaid program are primarily the states with Republican-led state governments: Midwestern and Southern states (Weiner 9/15/15). In addition, many states are defining coverages areas differently. When a region chosen as a coverage area combines rural areas and nearby urban areas, the number of insurers and number of coverage plans available to the rural areas increases. As a result, the costs of insurance due to competition and other factors are lowered. Therefore, this is beneficial to both urban and rural residents. However, some states, due to the discretion that they have, are not defining coverage areas that way (Dickstein). One example is Texas, which has created regions

I enjoyed reading your post and loved the part where you said we could empower the community and foster help seeking behaviors. I believe as we begin to understand these obstacles as social workers we can advocate for the Hispanic communities in these areas. “Many of the 61 million people who live in rural America have limited access to health care. Almost a quarter of the nation's population lives in rural places yet only an eighth of our doctors work there. “ (Rural health in the United States, 1999). There are six major ethical barriers that attribute to health care providers choosing larger cities to work in versus more rural areas in the US. “Obstacles to rural mental health services include shortages of qualified mental health professionals;

HISTORY: Funding for healthcare providers, equipment, supplies and technology are going to urban areas, leaving rural communities with limited resources.

This case study focuses on the challenges faced when providing healthcare in Ashe County, a rural area located in North Carolina. The county has a history of economic difficulty and after the recession of 2008 and the departure of several manufacturing plants, the economic situation has continued to decline. This has led to a shift in demographics leaving Ashe County with a proportion of children and elderly that is higher than the national average. These two groups are the least likely to be able to fund their health care expenses. This consideration, coupled with the low economic prospects for working aged adults has led Ashe County to become very dependent on charity care and government subsidies for healthcare. As the reimbursements from Medicare/Medicaid are very low, physicians and other providers who have practiced in that area, have not been able to reach financial prosperity causing a shortage of healthcare professionals.

And by doing so, these mutable factors would be changed for the better outcomes for both sides. Further, these two Professors from School of Medicine in Texas, conducted a study “Rural Residence and Migration for Specialty Physician Care” through a random mail survey of people residing in Iowa’s rural counties. The focus of the study was to look for the factors that associate “with migration for specialty physician care” (Borders and Rohrer, 2001).

From the above article reviews, it can be inferred that the shortage of primary care workforce is projected to be even more in the futures. There is a huge gap in the access to primary health care between rural and urban areas of the US and the projected shortage of primary care professionals will make the situation even worst. There are several ways to address these shortages and the articles have proposed a few of them. Use of nurse practitioners, access to electronic health records, increasing the wages of physicians willing to work in remote areas, and providing initiatives for working in the underserved areas are some of the ways of mitigating the primary care workforce. However, there is still a lot to research, owing to increasing shortage

Medical care in rural areas is greatly needed as life in rural areas especially those where farming, mining, and fishing are how people make their living. The median age of rural America is older but the reasons differ across communities (out-migration of youth vs. in-migration of retirees).

It has been a problem to discuss the medical needs of rural areas simply because there are

In order for these rural communities to maintain a positive, functioning health care system, more physicians and nurses need to be recruited to work in the rural setting. This means encouraging more health care physicians and staff to choose rural settings to work (NRHA 2003). With all of the definite downfalls of a rural community, there are many reasons rural communities are struggling to maintain adequate staff at hospitals. Students in the medical

What are Some Important Factors when Considering Health Care for a Rural Community with Limited Access to Medicine or Doctors?

Healthcare in Rural Areas Ro Ann Viloria Ju Hyun “Katie” Park Maui High School February 23, 2015 Table of Contents Abstract................................................................................................... 2 Introduction. ............................................................................................. 3 Transportation............................................................................................ 3-4 Emergency Medical Situations................................................................ 4

The first thing that I noticed is that there is a shortage of healthcare providers in Southwest Oregon. This is problematic because there are not enough healthcare providers to meet the healthcare needs of everyone who lives in rural communities (Rutledge, Haney, Bordelon, Renaud, & Fowler, 2014). My nursing diagnosis for this would be ineffective health maintenance related to insufficient resources. The members of the rural community are unable to identify, manage, and/or seek out help to maintain their health.