In honor of National Rural Health Day, the award-winning documentary film The Providers will be made available for screening through the PowerofRural.org website from November 7-21! Then, a special live NRHD web event titled "The Art of Telling Your Power of Rural Story", will be held on November 21 at 2:00 pm ET. Anna Moot-Levin, one of the two filmmakers, as well as Matt Probst, PA-C, a provider whose story is told in the film, will offer participants a glimpse into the world of making the film, and discuss what they hoped (and has been) the outcome of telling their story. Registrants of the film screening and web event will be given a “Providers” Discussion Guide as a framework for having meaningful conversations about the film’s central themes. Additionally, there will be a place on the PowerofRural.org site where registered participants can pose their questions of Anna and Matt in advance of the web event.

SORH and Community Engagement Toolkits now available! Find free, downloadable resources and ideas to help with your NRHD plans. We encourage you to share these tools widely with your partners. You can even make the tools your own by adding your logo and URL.

Click here for more NRHD news and activities!

Action Needed for SORH Appropriation

NOSORH is asking State Offices to contact their Senate members and request that House and Senate conferees agree to the House appropriated and Congressional authorized number for the SORH. In 2018, Congress passed and the President signed into law (Public Law 115-408), the State Offices of Rural Health Reauthorization Act of 2018 (S. 2278). The law authorizes the appropriation of $12,500,000 for the SORH grant program for each of fiscal years 2018 through 2022. Feel free to share this SORH Appropriations Factsheet .  Read More

NOSORH is excited to partner with RME Collaborative to offer the 2019 Rural Health Clinical Congress (RHCC) in conjunction with National Rural Health Day! The RHCC is designed to take the distance out of learning, providing high-level, practical education for rural healthcare professionals through a virtual learning environment. This free, multi-topic CME/CE event is specifically for primary care clinicians and registered nurses who care for patients in rural and underserved areas. The RHCC will take place on Saturday, November 23, and feature a comprehensive curriculum covering clinical, practice management, and patient-centric topics, including diabetes, heart failure, asthma, teledermatology, and dyslipidemia. The program will be delivered by rural and clinical experts through an interactive, engaging virtual platform. Click here to learn more and register for this unique continuing education event!

In the past few years it has become evident how much Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) want advice on strategy, finance, operations and regulations. To address that need, Lilypad, developer of the POND tool, developed a series of webinars to get that information out to the RHCs in a simple and focused way. In partnership with NOSORH, Lilypad and other subject matter experts will host these 30-minute, monthly webinars at no cost to the participating organization. The webinar series was developed specifically for RHC practice managers and providers with topics focusing on financial and operational improvement strategies. Check out the flyer outlining the lineup of webinars presented by rural-focused industry experts! Click on the link beside each topic you would like to attend to register for that session.

Purdue Healthcare Advisors   at Purdue University awarded Lean Office certifications to a handful of Indiana Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) this year, designating the organizations as capable of facilitating and sustaining process improvement for increased efficiency and improved patient care. They received the honor upon successful completion of the multiyear  Lean Healthcare Transformation Initiative , which was funded by the Indiana State Office of Rural Health (INSORH) Program through the Medicare Rural Hospital Flex Grant Program to develop lean thinking in rural hospitals and behavioral health organizations. The initiative aims to help build lean process improvement capacity in rural hospitals that provides ongoing improvements to operational, financial, and clinical metrics by removing “waste” and eliminating anything that does not add value for patients.

“For a relatively small investment of federal dollars and a four-year commitment, the state and Purdue have given these rural hospitals a way to continuously improve the patient experience while making significant improvements along the way,” said Ann Alley, director, Chronic Disease, Primary Care and Rural Health Division at the Indiana Department of Health Read More