Rural Health Care Services Outreach, Rural Health Network Development and Small Health Care Provider Quality Improvement

Objectives: The Delta Region Community Health Systems Development Program aims to enhance health care delivery in the Delta Region through intensive technical assistance to providers in select rural communities, including Critical Access Hospitals, small rural hospitals, Rural Health Clinics, and other healthcare organizations. The Delta States Rural Development Network Program funds organizations located in the eight Delta States, which include Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri. Awardees in these areas aim to promote population health, through the planning, implementation, and the development of integrated health care networks. In addition, eligible entities participate in the networks to achieve efficiencies, expand access to care, as well as to coordinate, and improve the quality of essential health care services. The Rural Health Network Development Program aims to support mature, integrated rural health care networks that have combined the functions of the entities participating in the network in order to address the health care needs of the targeted rural community. Awardees will combine the functions of the entities participating in the network to address the following statutory charges: (i) achieve efficiencies; (ii) expand access, coordinate, and improve the quality of essential health care services; and (iii) strengthen the rural health care system as a whole. The Rural Health Network Development Planning Program assists in the development of an integrated health care network, specifically for entities that do not have a history of formal collaborative efforts. Health care networks can be an effective strategy to help smaller rural health care providers and health care service organizations align resources and strategies, achieve economies of scale and efficiency, and address challenges more effectively as a group than as single providers. The Rural HIV/AIDS Planning Program is to assist in the planning and development of an integrated rural HIV health network for HIV care and treatment that will collaboratively plan to address key strategies identified in ‘Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America’. This program provides support to seven states with a disproportionate number of HIV diagnosis in rural areas: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. The program aims to address community HIV needs, gaps and challenges, and plans for implementation of innovative service delivery models with the goal of improving health outcomes among people with HIV, while reducing the number of new HIV infections. The Rural Health Opioid Program promotes rural health care services outreach by expanding the delivery of opioid related health care services to rural communities. The program aims to reduce the morbidity and mortality related to opioid overdoses in rural communities through the development of broad community consortiums to prepare individuals with opioid-use disorder to start treatment, implement care coordination practices to organize patient care activities, and support individuals in recovery through the enhancement of behavioral counselling and peer support activities. The Rural Health Care Coordination Program aims to support rural health consortiums/networks aiming to achieving the overall goals of improving access, delivery, and quality of care through the application of care coordination strategies in rural communities. In order to achieve the goal of the Care Coordination Program, applicants are required to coordinate the health care delivery services in rural communities through the following four focus areas: Collaboration, Leadership and Workforce, Improved Outcomes, and Sustainability. The Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies Program aims to improve access to and continuity of maternal and obstetrics care in rural communities. Rural Maternal Health Networks will develop and test strategies concerning rura