The Maryland State Office of Rural Health reports that 25% of Marylanders live in rural communities. Rural residents may face structural, economical, and physical barriers to health care while rural health care providers seek strategies and opportunities to increase access and services available to their communities.
The Maryland Rural Health Plan examined existing county health plans, Community Health Needs Assessments, State Health Improvement Process (SHIP) data, results from a state appointed study on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and feedback from citizens and health care professionals in each of Maryland’s rural counties to understand the state of rural health. Data was triangulated by topic. Themes found in multiple data sources emerged as key priorities. Findings were collated for the state, with county profiles highlighting their specific results. Preliminary findings were reviewed by the MRHA Board of Directors.
The resulting areas of need that were identified are:
- Access to care: reduce barriers, remove gaps, and increase access to quality health care for rural Marylanders.
- Areas of concern include access to general practitioners, specialists, behavioral health and oral health providers, as well as urgent care and emergency facilities.
- Sustainable funding mechanisms for health care services: secure permanent funding streams, explore new, innovative reimbursement systems, and work to improve funding regulations for all parts of health care infrastructure.
- Areas of concern were largely centered around hospitals, federally qualified health centers, and emergency medical services.
- Care coordination: explore mechanisms to link health care consumers to services and improve coordination and collaboration between health care providers within rural Maryland.
- The two main needs around care coordination were expansion of care coordination services to more providers, and increase coordination and knowledge of services between health care entities.
- Chronic disease prevention and management: reduce the incidence of new chronic diseases and increase ability for people to manage their conditions.
- Findings show three main areas of concern: health program locations and costs, lack of assistance for programs from Medicaid and Medicare, and sliding scale fees for vulnerable populations.
- Health literacy and health insurance literacy: explore ways to increase individual health literacy and health insurance literacy of consumers.
- The need was largely around the ability to understand health information and health insurance information, as well as transforming facilities/organizations to be easier for both health care professionals and consumers to navigate.
- Outreach and education: work with community-based services and health care infrastructure to provide outreach and education to citizens on relevant and emergent health issues.
- The need centered around the lack of awareness, knowledge, and accessibility of some of the outreach and education efforts in the community.