Rural Health news and information

Faced with tight budgets and aging patient populations, critical-access hospitals have seen their mortality rates increase during the past decade, even as such rates have dropped at other acute-care hospitals, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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A Republican congresswoman from Tennessee has introduced legislation that would exempt solo practitioners and physicians nearing retirement from the upcoming Medicare reimbursement cuts for physicians who do not meet meaningful-use requirements for electronic health-record systems under the...
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Leaders of critical-access hospitals and other rural hospitals and healthcare clinics now have access to a tool kit containing five online guides to help them participate in health information exchange.
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Lawmakers may step in to resolve a five-year dispute over the appropriate level of clinical oversight at rural hospitals.
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A study that looked at scope-of-practice laws in six states concluded that the laws don't restrict the breadth of primary-care services that nurse practitioners offer patients, but the laws still affect payer policies which then curtail how and where NPs can practice.
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Thanks to a proposed CMS rule change, dietitians and other clinicians at hospitals will be able to do the jobs they were trained for without having to hunt down a physician to supervise them.
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Dr. Jean Robert Ferdinand just wanted to get away from it all. Eighteen months ago, Ferdinand moved from New York to Heflin, Ala., to open Cleburne County Family and Sports Medicine.
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The CMS has proposed reducing hospital staffing requirements at critical-access hospitals, rural health clinics and federally qualified health centers, which could save those facilities as much as $676 million a year.
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Dr. Chet Anthony's patients don't typically include livestock, but last fall, the family physician made an exception for a donkey named Jeremiah.
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Expanding patient access to medical specialists is the goal of a new, permanent $400 million annual allocation to promote or develop high-speed communications links to rural providers.
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