The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment

The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2012-12-20
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309262011

In 1996, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications for Health Care. In that report, the IOM Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine found telemedicine is similar in most respects to other technologies for which better evidence of effectiveness is also being demanded. Telemedicine, however, has some special characteristics-shared with information technologies generally-that warrant particular notice from evaluators and decision makers. Since that time, attention to telehealth has continued to grow in both the public and private sectors. Peer-reviewed journals and professional societies are devoted to telehealth, the federal government provides grant funding to promote the use of telehealth, and the private technology industry continues to develop new applications for telehealth. However, barriers remain to the use of telehealth modalities, including issues related to reimbursement, licensure, workforce, and costs. Also, some areas of telehealth have developed a stronger evidence base than others. The Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) sponsored the IOM in holding a workshop in Washington, DC, on August 8-9 2012, to examine how the use of telehealth technology can fit into the U.S. health care system. HRSA asked the IOM to focus on the potential for telehealth to serve geographically isolated individuals and extend the reach of scarce resources while also emphasizing the quality and value in the delivery of health care services. This workshop summary discusses the evolution of telehealth since 1996, including the increasing role of the private sector, policies that have promoted or delayed the use of telehealth, and consumer acceptance of telehealth. The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment: Workshop Summary discusses the current evidence base for telehealth, including available data and gaps in data; discuss how technological developments, including mobile telehealth, electronic intensive care units, remote monitoring, social networking, and wearable devices, in conjunction with the push for electronic health records, is changing the delivery of health care in rural and urban environments. This report also summarizes actions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can undertake to further the use of telehealth to improve health care outcomes while controlling costs in the current health care environment.

Achieving Rural Health Equity and Well-Being

Achieving Rural Health Equity and Well-Being
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 95
Release: 2018-10-17
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309469058

Rural counties make up about 80 percent of the land area of the United States, but they contain less than 20 percent of the U.S. population. The relative sparseness of the population in rural areas is one of many factors that influence the health and well-being of rural Americans. Rural areas have histories, economies, and cultures that differ from those of cities and from one rural area to another. Understanding these differences is critical to taking steps to improve health and well-being in rural areas and to reduce health disparities among rural populations. To explore the impacts of economic, demographic, and social issues in rural communities and to learn about asset-based approaches to addressing the associated challenges, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a workshop on June 13, 2017. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Handbook of Research on Leadership and Advocacy for Children and Families in Rural Poverty

Handbook of Research on Leadership and Advocacy for Children and Families in Rural Poverty
Author: Greene, H. Carol
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 525
Release: 2020-03-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1799827895

Rural poverty encompasses a distinctive deprivation in quality of life related to a lack of educational support and resources as well as unique issues related to geographical, cultural, community, and social isolation. While there have been many studies and accommodations made for the impoverished in urban environments, those impoverished in rural settings have been largely overlooked and passed over by current policy. The Handbook of Research on Leadership and Advocacy for Children and Families in Rural Poverty is an essential scholarly publication that creates awareness and promotes action for the advocacy of children and families in rural poverty and recommends interdisciplinary approaches to support the cognitive, social, and emotional needs of children and families in poverty. Featuring a wide range of topics such as mental health, foster care, and public policy, this book is ideal for academicians, counselors, social workers, mental health professionals, early childhood specialists, school psychologists, administrators, policymakers, researchers, and students.

Ethical Issues in Rural Health Care

Ethical Issues in Rural Health Care
Author: Craig M. Klugman
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2013-01-02
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1421411504

Klugman and Dalinis initiate a much-needed conversation about the ethical and policy concerns facing health care providers in the rural United States. This volume initiates a much-needed conversation about the ethical and policy concerns facing health care providers in the rural United States. Although 21 percent of the population lives in rural areas, only 11 percent of physicians practice there. What challenges do health care workers face in remote locations? What are the differences between rural and urban health care practices? What particular ethical issues arise in treating residents of small communities? Craig M. Klugman and Pamela M. Dalinis gather philosophers, lawyers, physicians, nurses, and researchers to discuss these and other questions, offering a multidisciplinary overview of rural health care in the United States. Rural practitioners often practice within small, tight-knit communities, socializing with their patients outside the examination room. The residents are more likely to have limited finances and to lack health insurance. Physicians may have insufficient resources to treat their patients, who often have to travel great distances to see a doctor. The first part of the book analyzes the differences between rural and urban cultures and discusses the difficulties in treating patients in rural settings. The second part features the personal narratives of rural health care providers, who share their experiences and insights. The last part introduces unique ethical challenges facing rural health care providers and proposes innovative solutions to those problems. This volume is a useful resource for bioethicists, members of rural bioethics committees and networks, policy makers, teachers of health care providers, and rural practitioners themselves.

Quality Through Collaboration

Quality Through Collaboration
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2005-04-24
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309094399

Building on the innovative Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, Quality Through Collaboration: The Future of Rural Health offers a strategy to address the quality challenges in rural communities. Rural America is a vital, diverse component of the American community, representing nearly 20% of the population of the United States. Rural communities are heterogeneous and differ in population density, remoteness from urban areas, and the cultural norms of the regions of which they are a part. As a result, rural communities range in their demographics and environmental, economic, and social characteristics. These differences influence the magnitude and types of health problems these communities face. Quality Through Collaboration: The Future of Rural Health assesses the quality of health care in rural areas and provides a framework for core set of services and essential infrastructure to deliver those services to rural communities. The book recommends: Adopting an integrated approach to addressing both personal and population health needs Establishing a stronger health care quality improvement support structure to assist rural health systems and professionals Enhancing the human resource capacity of health care professionals in rural communities and expanding the preparedness of rural residents to actively engage in improving their health and health care Assuring that rural health care systems are financially stable Investing in an information and communications technology infrastructure It is critical that existing and new resources be deployed strategically, recognizing the need to improve both the quality of individual-level care and the health of rural communities and populations.

Rural Public Health

Rural Public Health
Author: Jacob C. Warren
Publisher: Springer Publishing Company
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2014-01-14
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0826108946

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Rural Health in the United States

Rural Health in the United States
Author: Thomas C. Ricketts
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 1999-10-07
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0199759723

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. Sponsored by the U.S. Office of Rural Health Policy, this unique book provides the facts about this imbalance and interprets them in the context of government programs that promote the placement of doctors and the operation of hospitals in rural places while paying them less to treat Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. The authors' comprehensive analysis of rural health care delivery shows where there are differences in rates of death and disease between rural areas using maps, graphs, and plain-English descriptions. The book provides a thorough look at health care in rural America, giving a snapshot of how doctors, hospitals, and technology are unevenly distributed outside the nation's metropolitan areas.

Modern Epidemiology

Modern Epidemiology
Author: Kenneth J. Rothman
Publisher: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Total Pages: 776
Release: 2008
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780781755641

The thoroughly revised and updated Third Edition of the acclaimed Modern Epidemiology reflects both the conceptual development of this evolving science and the increasingly focal role that epidemiology plays in dealing with public health and medical problems. Coauthored by three leading epidemiologists, with sixteen additional contributors, this Third Edition is the most comprehensive and cohesive text on the principles and methods of epidemiologic research. The book covers a broad range of concepts and methods, such as basic measures of disease frequency and associations, study design, field methods, threats to validity, and assessing precision. It also covers advanced topics in data analysis such as Bayesian analysis, bias analysis, and hierarchical regression. Chapters examine specific areas of research such as disease surveillance, ecologic studies, social epidemiology, infectious disease epidemiology, genetic and molecular epidemiology, nutritional epidemiology, environmental epidemiology, reproductive epidemiology, and clinical epidemiology.

Handbook for Rural Health Care Ethics

Handbook for Rural Health Care Ethics
Author: William A. Nelson
Publisher: Dartmouth College Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Medical ethics
ISBN: 9781584659587

A comprehensive guide to the unique nature of rural health care ethics