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

Objectives: Delta Region Community Health Systems Development Program: enhances 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. 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. It aims to promote population health, through the planning, implementation, and the development of integrated health care networks. Eligible entities participate in the networks to achieve efficiencies, expand access to care, and coordinate and improve the quality of essential health care services. Delta Region Rural Health Workforce Training Program: addresses the ongoing need in healthcare facilities for trained administrative support or business operations professionals in rural communities through the development of Strategic Networks that support recruitment, formal training, certification, and placement of students. Delta Health Systems Implementation Program: improves healthcare delivery in rural areas by implementing projects that will improve the financial sustainability of hospitals and allow for increased access to care in rural communities. Rural Health Network Development Program: supports integrated rural health care networks that have combined the functions of the entities participating in the network 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. Rural Health Network Development Planning Program: assists in the development of an integrated rural 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. Rural Health Care Coordination Program: supports 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. Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies Program: improves access to and continuity of maternal and obstetrics care in rural communities. Rural Maternal Health Networks develop and test strategies concerning rural regional approaches to risk appropriate care, a network approach to coordinating a continuum of care, leveraging telehealth and specialty care, and financial sustainability. Networks include rural or critical access hospitals, health centers (FQHC), Level III (Subspecialty Care) or Level IV (Regional Perinatal Health Care Centers) facilities, local social services (such as state Home Visiting and Healthy Start programs), and the state Medicaid agency, as partners. Rural Health Care Services Outreach Program: provides support to rural communities to expand and enhance the delivery of health care services through a strong consortium of partners. Outreach projects utilize evidence-based or promising practice models to implement innovative approaches that address community identified health needs, improve population health, demonstrate health outcomes and sustainability. The program also includes the Healthy Rural Hometown Initiative (HRHI) to address the underlying factors that are driving growing rural health disparities related to the five leading causes of avoidable death (heart disease, cancer, unintentional in