Educational Posters

Enhancing Community Relationships to Improve Health and Safety

Wendy Ward, Director of Patient Safety/Risk Manager, Great Plains Health

How a rural hospital worked to gain trust through collaboration of community agencies to provide health and safety to the patients who live within a community. The concerted efforts of multi-disciplinary teams can make an impact on the lives of patients that Great Plains Health serves through improved communication, assessment of needs and teams working together to improve community needs.

Leveraging an Innovative Telementoring Model to Accelerate Workforce Development Efforts in Rural Substance Use Interventions

Adrienne Lindsey, Assistant Professor, University of Texas Health San Antonio

Recent Centers for Disease Control (2022) estimates indicate drug overdoses have risen during the pandemic, with 107,000 deaths in the previous year, the highest number ever recorded. Harm reduction practices, such as naloxone distribution or overdose prevention education, are proposed by various federal bodies to hold tremendous potential to reduce overdose deaths (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2021). However, inpatient settings, such as hospitals, as well as rural areas, have demonstrated limited uptake of harm reduction strategies (Sharma et al., 2017; Des Jarlais, 2017). As the only point of care for many patients with a substance use disorder, hospital settings are well suited for patient access to these life-saving measures. We applied an innovative, evidence-based telementoring model, Project ECHO, to prepare providers to deliver these practices. Project ECHO leverages web-based technology to expose practitioners to a panel of specialists and network of other providers for learning and case consultation around a given healthcare condition, such as substance use disorder. In May 2022, experts from University of Texas Health San Antonio, The University of Texas at Austin, and community-based harm reduction and opioid use disorder treatment organizations partnered to launch a Harm Reduction ECHO program, with an emphasis on reaching rural areas. Preliminary programmatic results will be shared, as well as lessons learned and implications for hospital-based providers in rural areas.

Leveraging Funds, Technology and Partnerships to Expand Access to Opioid Use and Substance Use Disorder Services in Rural North Carolina Before, During and After COVID-19

Roxanne Elliott, Policy Director, FirstHealth of the Carolinas

In 2018, FirstHealth of the Carolinas, a health care system that serves a five-county rural region in south-central North Carolina, leveraged four federal grants to begin to address the opioid and substance use crisis — resulting in the creation of the Sandhills Opioid Response Consortium, which currently has over 75 partners including treatment facilities, public health, behavioral health, social services, NAACP, county government, law enforcement, school systems, community individuals, individuals with lived experiences, non-profit organizations and vocational rehabilitation. Learn how this collaboration established a regional peer support specialist program, implemented community awareness and stigma education campaigns, linked individuals to treatment and recovery resources, and provided community-wide harm reduction.

New Opportunities for Expanding Rural Graduate Medical Education to Improve Rural Health Outcomes: Implications of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021

Jacob Rains, Health Services Researcher, Rural Residency Planning and Development Technical Assistance Center

People in rural communities experience consistently worse health outcomes than their urban and suburban counterparts. Increasing the physician supply in rural areas through graduate medical education (GME) training can help address this challenge, but rural hospitals have faced inadequate funding. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 (CAA) seeks to address disparities in Medicare GME funding. This session will describe historical factors that have impeded the growth of training programs in rural areas, summarize the implications of each CAA provision for rural GME, and provide guidance for hospitals seeking to avail themselves of the opportunities presented by the CAA.

Overcoming Deaths of Despair in Rural Communities

Jenni Word, Chief Nursing Officer, Wallowa Memorial Hospital

Jana Distefano, Director of Community Health, Saint Anthony Hospital

Deaths of despair are defined as deaths due to suicide, overdoses and alcoholic liver diseases that disproportionately impact white males without a college degree. Rural populations continue to be affected by such deaths at a much greater rate than those living in urban areas. This session explores the work of Wallowa Memorial Hospital and local community partners (a collaborative called Network of Care) as they begin their journey toward combatting deaths of despair within their population. In addition, it provides opportunities for participants to connect and share their own successes with each other through brainstorming breakouts.

Patient Centered Medical Home in a Rural Health Care Setting

Lapriel Dia, Director of Nursing, San Carlos Apache Healthcare Corporation

Explore how San Carlos (Ariz.) Apache Health Care, which serves over 15,000 Apaches and their families, successfully became a Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH). Encompassing the five essential components of PCMH — patient-centeredness, comprehensive care, superb access to care, coordinated care and quality and safety, the PCMH is achieving its mission to heal, serve and empower the In-deh people and provide care in a respectful and compassionate way. Through collaboration and care coordination, patients get what they need, when they need it — ensuring equitable care and access to care, including to cardiology — identified as a key necessity for PCMH patients.

Protecting the Breadth of Skills: Ensuring Best Practice for Rural Patients in Critical Access Facilities

Elizabeth Wells-Beede, Clinical Associate Professor, Texas A&M University

Bruce Williams, Director, Clinical Learning Resource Center, Health Science Center, Texas A&M University

Nancy Dickey, MD, President Emeritus, Health Science Center, Executive Director, A&M Rural and Community Health Insitute, Head, Department of Primary Care Medicine, Texas A&M University

Skills needed to employ best practice and ensure safe patient care may be lost if not used regularly, especially in rural hospitals, where providers generally care for small numbers of any given diagnosis. The simulated training platform may be one vehicle to increase the confidence of rural hospitals when dealing with emergent events that occur very rarely in their community, such as an obstetric emergency. In this session, explore how Texas A&M University established a team to develop scenarios that could be practiced on simulated patients and mannequins to teach muscle memory, protocol memory and teamwork without putting an actual patient at risk.

Recipe for Success: Bellin Health Oconto Hospital's Journey to Nutrition Redesign

Julie Bieber, Vice President, Bellin Health

Due to its small size, Bellin Health Oconto Hospital (BHOH), a 10-bed critical access hospital in the rural community of Oconto, Wisc., contracts with local vendors to bring food in rather than preparing it in-house. After BHOH parted ways with its previous food vendor, a master of science in nursing, leadership and management student seized the opportunity to launch a nutrition redesign project. Learn how the student, working with colleagues and professors, evaluated the patients’ food trays, including carb counts, portion size and specific dietary needs, to help them choose a new vendor. BHOH has since received ample positive patient feedback, and nurses are able to focus their time exclusively on their patients’ health care instead of fielding concerns about meals.