Call for Nominations

All Virginia Rural Health Association members and member organizations are invited to submit nominations for the 2011 Virginia Rural Health Association Awards. Nominees are not required to be members of the association. Commitment and service to the advancement of rural health in Virginia may be in the form of direct provision of health care services, governmental or educational advocacy, activities or research that improves the health of communities or populations.

Lawmaker of the Year:
Lawmaker of the Year is designed to give special recognition to an elected official at any level who has demonstrated support for improving health in rural Virginia.

The Charles Crowder, Jr. Award:
This award is given annually by the Virginia Rural Health Association to recognize outstanding individual commitment and service to the advancement of rural health in Virginia.

The Best Practices in Rural Health Award:
This award is given annually by the Virginia Rural Health Association to recognize a program or institution that exemplifies commitment and service to the advancement of rural health in Virginia.

Friend of the Association:
This award is given to recognize a program, institution or individual that has advocated for or aided the Association in support of the Association's mission.

Nomination Form and Awards Presentation
Click here to download the nomination form and instructions. The deadline to submit all nominations is November 11, 2011; please contact VRHA if you have any questions.

Awards Presentation:
Honorees will be recognized during the Awards Luncheon beginning at 12:30pm on December 9, 2011 at the VRHA Annual Conference in Staunton, Virginia. Click here to read about previous winners.

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Members in the News

VRHA members Peggy Whitehead received the Council for Rural Virginia award at the recent Summit for Rural Virginia. This award is given annually by the Council for Rural Virginia to recognize outstanding indivdual commitment and service to the advancement of rural communities and/or issues in Virginia.

Whitehead was chosen for her long-term leadership at the Blue Ridge Medical Center, including the Rural Health Outreach Program (RHOP). She has grown programs to meet the health needs uncovered in needs assessments, home visits, and health depot screenings.

RHOP has been recognized in state and national arenas, promoting a “best practice” designed for uninsured, low-income rural residents to access preventive, acute and chronic care services, for a small annual fee and co-payment.  Whitehead secured a mobile van to travel to the fruit pickers camps where screenings identified those in need of medical evaluations, and provided health education. 

Other awardees were:

• Shenandoah Valley Energy Partnership - Best Practices Award
• Virginia Community Capital - Friend of the Rural Council Award

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More Members in the News

VRHA member Steve Sedlock, executive director for the Virginia Network for Geospatial Health Research (VANGHR), will be presenting at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC on November 1st, 2011.  This year's meeting, with the theme "Healthy Communities Promote Health Minds and Bodies," will be the 139th annual meeting for the organization.

The VANGHR presentation is titled "Virginia Rural Health Data Portal." Introduced for public use in November 2009, the portal provides public health and social determinant data at the county and census tract levels, as well as some data at the address level. The data portal is composed of two components: the statistical component and the geospatial component. The geospatial component provides data on hospitals, HPSA designations, prenatal care, health insurance, child care, mobility, infant mortality, mobility,
PQI, poverty, and other demographics. Though users are mostly from the rural health community, data is available for the entire state, regardless of classification, and to anyone with Web browsing capability. Workforce data, disease surveillance data, and functional enhancements will be added to the portal over the next 12 months through a grant from the Virginia Department of Health.

Sedlock has also introduced the Virginia Rural Health Data Portal at the 2010 ESRI Health Conference in Denver, CO.  ESRI Health is the largest conference for geospatial health technology in the world.  Sedlock also presented at this year's ESRI Health Conference in Washington, DC, demonstrating the enhancements and added content provided in version 2 of the data portal.

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New Telehealth Resource Centers

By Eric Wicklund - Healthcare IT News

The nation’s network of telehealth resource centers currently resembles an incomplete quilt, with nine centers covering parts of the country while leaving some rather conspicuous regions uncovered. This week, that quilt began to look a little more complete.

The U.S. Health Resources and Service Administration has awarded Regional Telehealth Resource Center grants of almost $1 million apiece to three organizations charged with launching centers based in Maine, Indiana and Virginia, creating public-private partnerships that will offer guidance and resources to those looking to enter this fast-growing segment of the healthcare network.

In Charlottesville, Va., the University of Virginia Center for Telehealth will use its grant to establish the Mid-Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center, which will link urban and rural healthcare providers in the District of Columbia, Virginia, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia. Officials hope to launch the resource center in October.

“We are delighted that HRSA has provided us with the opportunity to share models of care provided via telehealth with our partners across the mid-Atlantic region,” said Karen Rheuban, MD, director of the UVA Center for Telehealth and a former president of the ATA. “It will be a privilege to collaborate with distinguished institutions to further improve access to care using advanced and innovative technologies.”

The UVA’s telemedicine network already includes more than 40 subspecialties and 85 locations in Virginia, saving residents an estimated 6.7 million miles of travel for medical care, according to David Cattell-Gordon, director of the UVA’s Office of Telemedicine. In addition, last year Gov. Bob McDonnell signed a law requiring insurance companies to reimburse providers for telemedicine services

Read the full article.

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Virginia Dental Home Initiative

The Virginia Dental Home Initiative is an educational outreach program for dentists, dental hygienists and early childhood educators. Its goal is to increase awareness of the importance of oral health and secure comprehensive, ongoing dental care from a consistent provider (a dental home) for all Virginia children.

Launched by the Virginia Oral Health Coalition in partnership with the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry, the Initiative addresses two obstacles to improving dental health among Virginia’s children:

• Many parents, caregivers and educators are unaware of the important role early dental visits and an established dental home play in preventing dental problems.
• There are unique challenges to providing dental care to young children. Many general dentists and hygienists are unaware of key pediatric clinical techniques.

The Virginia Dental Home Initiative includes free workshops offered throughout the Commonwealth. These workshops, which include four no-cost continuing education credits:

• Teach dentists and hygienists the unique clinical skills necessary to provide dental care to young children
• Provide teachers with effective strategies and techniques to help children and parents understand the importance of a lifetime of good oral health and the need for every child to have a dental home

For more information about upcoming trainings in your area, email info@vaoralhealth.org.

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Vets Will Get Rides to VA

By Carol Vaughn DelMarVa Now

Eastern Shore of Virginia veterans soon will have better access to medical services thanks to an initiative that will link volunteer drivers with veterans who need a ride to the Hampton VA Medical Center.

Monica Hall, the local veterans employment representative at the Virginia Employment Commission in Onley, began looking for a solution after local veterans' need for transportation to their medical appointments across the bay became apparent during the course of her work, where she sees many clients who have been recently diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Read the full article.

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Liberty's Medical School Proposal

By Sarah Bruyn Jones and Mason Adams

Liberty University's plans to broaden its academic offerings into the increasingly popular health care arena, including opening a medical school, moved a step closer Thursday to securing a $12 million matching grant from the Virginia Tobacco Commission.

The full commission will vote on whether to issue the grant Sept. 29, said Jerry Falwell, Liberty's president and chancellor.

The university has proposed opening the center by 2013. It would house a school of osteopathic medicine and a school of health sciences. Once fully operational, officials estimate that the center's scholars would represent about 15 percent of the students at the Lynchburg campus. That includes an enrollment of more than 4,000 students by the fifth year of operation and a medical school with a class size between 40 and 50 students.

Read the full article.

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Medicare, Medicaid and Rural

By the Center for Rural Affairs

As the president and Congress continue efforts to reduce the nation’s budget deficit, Medicaid and Medicare – the nation’s largest public health insurance programs – have large targets placed on them as major contributors to any deficit reduction plan.

As this debate carries on for the remainder of 2011, it is critical for rural America to recognize the importance of both programs to rural people and rural areas.

For more information, read the full article, review concerns from the National Rural Health Association or review a presentation to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

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Rural Hospitals Become EHR Partners

By Lindsey Corey - National Rural Health Association

And in four small West Texas towns within 25 miles of each other, rivalries are real.

“You’ve heard of ‘Friday Night Lights,’” explains Rick DeFoore, CEO of Stamford Memorial Hospital, referring to a book, film and TV drama about high school football. “Two of these towns are fierce sports rivals, and you would think, ‘So what?’ But I promise you, it affects everything out here.”

Money-saving water agreements have been nixed, and forget about school consolidation. For years, four hospitals in those rural towns were as separate as separate can be.

Then came the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and incentives for facilities adopting electronic health records (EHR). Forty-five bed Anson General, 25-bed Stamford Memorial, 20-bed Stonewall Memorial and 14-bed Throckmorton County Memorial hospitals were each solely using paper patient files.

“None of us had the luxury of access to capital, but we all wanted to provide a higher quality of care for our patients, and EHR is a tool to help us do that,” says Nathan Tudor, who was then CEO of Stonewall Memorial. “There was a friendly competition amongst us all, but for the betterment of the whole we set the egos aside and came together.”

Within six months of teaming up, all four hospitals had begun implementing EHR. Today, two – Stamford and Anson – have received meaningful use incentive checks from ARRA that more than covered their technology investment.

Read the full article. 

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Deepening Southern Poverty

By Sue Sturgis - Facing South

The U.S. Census Bureau released its latest poverty figures this week, and they show that poverty is worsening nationwide -- but especially in the South.

The official U.S. poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009. That marks the third consecutive annual increase in the national poverty rate, evidence of the persistently weak U.S. economy.

There were 46.2 million Americans living in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009 -- the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which the government has published poverty estimates.

Among U.S. regions, the South experienced the greatest increase in poverty from 2009 to 2010, at 1.2 percent. That was double the 0.6 percent increase in poverty in the Northeast and Midwest, and more than double the 0.5 percent increase in the West.

Read the full article.

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