What’s Different About Rural Healthcare

From the National Rural Health Association:

The obstacles faced by health care providers and patients in rural areas are vastly different than those in urban areas. Rural Americans face a unique combination of factors that create disparities in health care not found in urban areas. Economic factors, cultural and social differences, educational shortcomings, lack of recognition [...]

Rural Hospitalists, Part Three: Examples of Hospitalist Models

From Rural Doctoring:
In Part Two, I described two rural hospitals (fictionalized as Macys and Gimbels) and some of the tensions between them. Today, I’m going to show you three hospitalist programs at work in and around Rural. I know it seems ridiculous that a sparsely-populated rural area would need THREE hospitalist programs, but you might [...]

Overcoming the challenges facing rural health care

From the Health Care Blog:
About one-fifth of Americans live in rural areas, and providing health care to them is a challenge financially and logistically. Only 10 percent of the nation’s doctors practice in rural areas, and rural residents tend to be poorer and less likely to have employer-based insurance than urban dwellers.

ACEP Version: Emergency Patients Don’t Understand Doctor’s Instructions

From the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP):
Washington, DC- More than three-quarters of patients (78 percent) do not fully understand the care and discharge instructions they receive in the emergency department, and the vast majority of them are unaware that they do not understand what doctors have told them, according to a study published today [...]

ER Patients Don’t Understand Doc’s Orders

From ABC News:
More than three in four emergency room patients do not fully understand the instructions that doctors give them after their visits, new research suggests.
Even worse, not only do the patients not understand the care instructions from their doctors, but the vast majority are also unaware that they have not fully understood what the [...]

Hospital releases details of medical error to staff

From Modern Healthcare (free subscription required):
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center released details of a medical error to its entire staff following a recent wrong-site surgery.
The surgical team operated on the wrong side of a patient in an elective procedure after they did not conduct a “time out” to ensure that they had the right patient, [...]

Safety: Laws Reduce Drunken-Driving Deaths

From the New York Times:
Two federal policies meant to make it harder for young people to acquire alcohol have significantly reduced drunken-driving deaths, a new study finds.
The policies — banning purchase or possession of alcohol by people under 21 and making it illegal to use false identification to buy alcohol — have been in effect [...]