June 27 - July 5, 2011
June 27 - July 5, 2011 |
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In this Issue...
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June newsletter
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| VRHA News |
| Winners! |
Click here to view their photos.
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| Members in the News |
By NBC29.com Plans to build a new community health center in Charlottesville are on hold as the feds review the paperwork and sit on the money needed to get things started. Still, those hoping to see it happen are keeping their fingers crossed for the cash. Plans for a new community health center have long been in the works, after a study done by Dr. Lilian Peake at the Thomas Jefferson Health District revealed parts of Charlottesville's Fifeville area are medically underserved. This designation allowed the health district to apply for federal funding. It partnered with Central Virginia Health Service (CVHS) to apply for the grant. The proposed Rivanna Community Health Center would offer things the Charlottesville Free Clinic does not, like prenatal care. VRHA member Sheena Mackenzie of Central Virginia Health Services stated, "We're keeping our fingers crossed. We believe that Charlottesville would be a wonderful place to be working because there is a very supportive community. There's a strong interest in the community to make sure everybody who needs health care gets the medical services they need." Read the full article.
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| Virginia Rural Health News |
By Ken Slack - NBC29.com A trip to Augusta Health, used to simply mean a drive to the sprawling medical campus in Fishersville. Not any more, the hospital's name is attached to new offices and clinics throughout Augusta County and beyond. Augusta Health says it's all about improving access, so for example, a patient in the rural western part of the county doesn't postpone getting that pain checked out because it's too far to the doctor's office. A former auto-service station has been transformed into a human-service station. Augusta Health Family Practice has opened in Churchville, drastically cutting drive time for thousands of patients. Read the full article.
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| Close to Home |
By Bill Rosenberger - Herald-Dispatch To understand the seriousness of how medically underserved rural West Virginia families are, ask any doctor who has served on the mobile medical clinic in the past 19 years since it arrived in Southwestern West Virginia. "I gave 17 shots to four children in one day," said Dr. Jennifer Biber, who is a second-year resident with the Department of Pediatrics at the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. "None had a single shot in their life." Even more children will be served at the 10 schools in Cabell, Wayne and Lincoln counties, thanks to the new, eco-friendly mobile medical bus that was unveiled Thursday morning at Spring Hill Elementary. The new $250,000, custom-built doctor's office on wheels was funded in part by a grant from the Walmart Foundation designated for the expansion of health care services in rural areas. The van it replaces was 19 years old and had taken quite a beating from its hundreds of miles of weekly treks to East Lynn, Crum and Fort Gay in Wayne County; West Hamlin in Lincoln County; and to Salt Rock and Huntington in Cabell County. Read the full article.
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| National Rural Health News |
| Vets Healthcare Battle |
By David Goldstein - Kansas City Star Frank Munk earned his veterans’ medical benefits more than four decades ago in Quang Tri province, a hard-fought, bloody piece of ground in Vietnam. Yet he doesn’t always choose to use them. The 64-year-old truck mechanic from western Kansas instead spends $2,500 out of his pocket on a private doctor for such things as hearing tests. It’s that or drive nearly 300 miles to a Veterans Affairs hospital in Wichita or Denver. “I can’t afford to take two days off,” explained Munk, who is self-employed. “The VA care is getting cost-prohibitive for people in the rural areas because of the time, and a lot of them can’t drive themselves.” Munk’s dilemma is shared by other veterans who live beyond America’s cities and suburbs. Long distances and restrictive rules have become obstacles to health care for many of the more than 3 million rural veterans enrolled in the VA health system. They account for 41 percent of all enrollees. Read the full article.
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| Magnolia State Grows Its Own |
By Barbara Bein - AAFP News Patrick "Brent" Smith, M.D., is a third-year family medicine resident at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, or UMMC, in Jackson. He was also one of the first scholars in the Mississippi Rural Physicians Scholarship Program or MRPSP. As such, he'll soon return to his Mississippi Delta hometown of Cleveland (population 12,300) to be a rural family physician. Getting family and other primary care physicians to sprint back home to practice in rural, underserved communities is the goal of the MRPSP. Conceived by the Mississippi AFP, the scholarship program is a way for Mississippi to grow its own physicians and alleviate crisis-level health care professional shortages in many areas of the Magnolia State. Read the full article.
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Health Care Quality: Additional Resources For Local Change
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Do you have exciting rural health news that needs to be shared? Do you know of an upcoming health-related event which should be on our calendar? E-mail Beth O'Connor at: boconnor@vcom.vt.edu |
Disclaimer: The VRHA circulates state and national news as an information service only. Inclusion of information is not intended as an endorsement. If you prefer to receive email in plain text or rtf format instead of html or if you receive this email more than once, email VRHA. |
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