Role of Rural Hospitals in Community-Centered Systems of Care: Supporting Population Health Improvement for Rural Communities

Funder:	Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP)
Research center:	Upper Midwest Rural Health Research Center Phone: 612.624.8618
Lead researcher:	Ira Moscovice, PhD
Contact:	Walter Gregg, MA, MPH, 612.627.4411, gregg006@umn.edu
Project funded:	September 2005
Project completed:	February 2007
Topics:	Health services Hospitals and clinics

This project will assess the degree to which rural hospitals engage in activities that facilitate community responsiveness and the provision of community-oriented services, and identify environmental and institutional factors that facilitate the successful implementation of the IOM “Quality through Collaboration for Rural America” report recommendations. The project will use a mix of descriptive and multivariate statistics to analyze cross-sectional data on hospital and community characteristics for the years 1996 to 2004 from the American Hospital Association Annual Survey and the Area Resource File.

Publications

• Far From the City: Community Orientation and Responsiveness of Rural Hospitals
  Author(s): Walter Gregg, Douglas Wholey
  Date: 05 / 2008
  Reports the findings of a national study focused on variation in hospital community orientation and responsiveness across differing rural contexts. Study findings suggest that measures of community orientation and responsiveness differ between urban and rural hospitals, and further research is needed to develop an improved, context specific, model for community benefits.
• Role of Rural Hospitals in Community-Centered Systems of Care
  Author(s): Walter Gregg, D. Wholey
  Report Number: Working Paper No. 5
  Date: 02 / 2007