Congress introduced the Rural Health Care Transition (RHCT) Grant Program in 1989 to assist financially troubled, small rural hospitals. This article discusses grant effects on the second cohort of hospitals to complete their 3-year grants. Although three-quarters of the grantees implemented all or most of their goals, 11 percent could not implement a viable project. Grantees added or upgraded ...

Even the smallest, most isolated rural hospitals are now required to have bioterrorism preparedness plans. From the perspective of many rural hospitals, however, there is a disparity between Federal expectations and the realities of small hospitals operating in geographically isolated communities. As part of an effort to better understand how to close this gap, the Walsh Center for Rural Health...

Many rural communities across canada are facing challenges to the sustainability of core emergency and acute care health services, primarily due to problems with medical and nursing staffing. Data related to service efficacy and effectiveness are not well organized. Most of Canada still relies on reporting by large geopolitical areas (local health areas) that do not always relate natural catchm...

BACKGROUND Aeromedical transport in northern areas may be associated with hypothermia. The objective of this study was to determine whether significant hypothermia (core temperature <35 masculineC) occurs in severely injured or ill intubated patients during transport by rotary wing aircraft. METHODS In this prospective cohort study, all intubated patients over 16 years of age who were transpo...

The pressures for closer alignment between physicians and hospitals in both rural and urban areas are increasing. This study empirically specifies independent dimensions of physician and clinical integration and compares the extent to which such activities are practiced between rural and urban hospitals and among rural hospitals in different organizational and market contexts. Results suggest t...

Democratic decentralisation is often presented as the sine qua non of rural poverty reduction. But there is little evidence that either democracy or decentralisation is necessary for poverty reduction in rural or urban areas, and indeed some evidence that they are counter-productive. There are success stories to report, however. They are cases where three conditions have been met: an appropriat...

BACKGROUND Good infant growth is important for future health. Assessing growth is common in pediatric care all over the world, both at the population and individual level. There are few studies of birth weight and growth studies comparing urban and rural communities in Vietnam. The first aim is to describe and compare the birth weight distributions and physical growth (weight and length) of chi...

Severe atmospheric and road surface conditions on rural highways create a variety of transportation hazards. Variable Speed Limit (VSL) systems can mitigate the dangers caused by these conditions by displaying prudent maximum speed limits that reflect the prevailing atmospheric and road surface conditions. This paper discusses the design and implementation of a fuzzy rulebased system (FRBS) tha...

The number of stand-alone rural hospitals has been shrinking as larger health systems target these hospitals for mergers and acquisitions (M and As). However, little research has focused specifically on rural hospital M and A transactions. Using data from Irving Levin Associates' Healthcare M and A Report and Medicare Cost Reports from 2005 to 2012, we examined two research questions: (1) What ...

The present study measures levels of stigma within health care settings in urban and rural Gujarat, in an attempt to understand how this may have contributed to the state's increasing HIV incidence. Two sites were studied: a rural hospital in Bardoli and an urban hospital in Surat. HIV-associated stigma among healthcare workers (N=170) was assessed using a Stigma Index. Overall, analyses sugges...