VIDEO: Study identifies priorities for rural health system redesign

Disparities in health care access and outcomes among patients in rural areas of the United States have led to calls for a system redesign.

Rebecca L. West, MPH, a research manager at Ipsos and DrPH candidate at Boston University, and colleagues recently conducted a whole-systems qualitative study to identify strategies that would improve the rural health care system.

After interviewing more than 70 clinicians and administrators in Washington County, Maine — a rural, impoverished area with limited access to health and social services — the researchers identified three priorities:

• address the maldistribution of services and resources;
• change legislation around insurance and scope of practice; and
• shift toward value-based purchasing models.

In an interview with Healio, West said the study highlights the importance of using a whole-system lens to understand the needs of rural health care systems.

“Employing this whole system lens across a system is possible and can yield really rich and insightful results,” she said. “Even though this study is limited to the scope of just one county, the findings are still really generalizable because it reflects what’s happening across the whole community and what a lot of rural communities in the U.S. look like.”

In this video, West discusses the main takeaways of the study and the implications for other rural health care systems.

Reference:

West RL, et al. J Prim Care Community Health. 2022;doi:10.1177/21501319221102041.