Rural Health Information Hub Latest News

New Report Details Community Impact and Benefit Activities of Critical Access, Small Rural, and Urban Hospitals

The Flex Monitoring Team has released a new report on the community impact and benefit activities of Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), rural non-CAHs, and urban hospitals. The report enables State Flex Programs and CAH administrators to compare the community impact and benefit profiles of CAHs nationally to the performance of CAHs in their state.

The report may be found in the link below. Pages 1–5 provide national data with key findings and pages 6–95 provide state-specific tables. Shortcut links to each state’s tables are on the bottom of page 5.  The report can be accessed here.

AHA Rural Report Series: Focus on Integrated Behavioral Health Care

The American Hospital Association (AHA)’s Advancing Health Rural Report Series released a podcast in May 2019 on best practices in integrated behavioral health services.

As AHA, notes, rural hospitals are the cornerstones of their communities, serving as principal access points to care for the nearly 60 million people or 20 percent of Americans who live in rural areas.  Despite their importance, rural hospitals continuously confront a multitude of challenges that threaten their ability to ensure local access to care.  Hear experts talk about evidence-based programs that address behavioral health services, including Shelly Rivello, Director of Integrated Care at JC Blair Memorial Hospital, a rural hospital serving Huntingdon, PA in central Pennsylvania, who discusses the hospital’s integrated behavioral health program, The HOPE Project.

Access the podcast at https://soundcloud.com/advancinghealth/aha-rural-report-series.