Browsing by Subject "Rural health"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Deploying Digital Health Technologies for Remote Physical Activity Monitoring of Rural Populations With Chronic Neurologic Disease
    (Elsevier, 2022-12-05) Waddell, Kimberly J.; Patel, Mitesh S.; Wilkinson, Jayne R.; Burke, Robert E.; Bravata, Dawn M.; Koganti, Sreelatha; Wood, Stephanie; Morley, James F.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Objective: The objective of this pilot study was to examine the feasibility of a remote physical activity monitoring program, quantify baseline activity levels, and examine predictors of activity among rurally residing adults with Parkinson disease (PD) or stroke. Design: Thirty-day observational study. Participants completed standardized assessments, connected a wearable device, and synced daily step counts via a remote monitoring platform. Setting: Community-based remote monitoring. Participants: Rurally residing adults with PD or stroke enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration. Intervention: N/A. Main outcome measures: Feasibility was evaluated using recruitment data (response rates), study completion (completed assessments and connected the wearable device), and device adherence (days recording ≥100 steps). Daily step counts were examined descriptively. Predictors of daily steps were explored across the full sample, then by diagnosis, using linear mixed-effects regression analyses. Results: Forty participants (n=20 PD; n=20 stroke) were included in the analysis with a mean (SD) age of 72.9 (7.6) years. Participants resided 252.6 (105.6) miles from the coordinating site. Recruitment response rates were 11% (PD) and 6% (stroke). Study completion rates were 71% (PD) and 80% (stroke). Device adherence rates were 97.0% (PD) and 95.2% (stroke). Participants with PD achieved a median [interquartile range] of 2618 [3896] steps per day and participants with stroke achieved 4832 [7383] steps. Age was the only significant predictor of daily steps for the full sample (-265 steps, 95% confidence interval [-407, -123]) and by diagnosis (PD, -175 steps, [-335, -15]; stroke, -357 steps [-603, -112]). Conclusions: A remote physical activity monitoring program for rurally residing individuals with PD or stroke was feasible. This study establishes a model for a scalable physical activity program for rural, older populations with neurologic conditions from a central coordinating site.
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    The Effects of Healthcare Service Disruptions on the Community, Healthcare Services and Access to Care
    (2022-08) Mills, Carol Ann; Blackburn, Justin; Holmes, Ann M.; Unroe, Kathleen; Yeager, Valerie A.
    Access to healthcare services is important for improving health outcomes, preventing and managing illness, and achieving health equity. The geographic maldistribution of physicians has a negative impact on rural areas compared to urban, particularly as it relates to access to healthcare. Rural hospitals have been closing or converting to another form of healthcare service at an increasing rate, adding another element to the existing complexities in rural access to care. Although a hospital closure in any location may have a considerable impact on the community, the closure of a rural hospital may have disproportionately more substantial implications for the economy and employment, health outcomes, and access to care. The contributing factors preceding rural hospital closures have been studied, but less is known about the full impact of rural hospital closures on the community. There is some evidence of shortages in healthcare providers and services, and therefore communities may employ multiple strategies to mitigate the shortages and provide services, including utilizing telehealth/virtual services. This dissertation proposes to examine the effects of rural hospital closures on the community, healthcare services, access to care, and provide a qualitative assessment of telehealth as a strategy to bridge gaps in provider access. This dissertation includes three studies: 1) a systematic review of the literature to examine the impact of rural hospital closures on the community; 2) an empirical study that utilizes a generalized difference in difference design with county and year fixed effects to estimate the relationship between rural hospital closures and nursing homes; and 3) a qualitative study exploring the perceptions and experiences of the nurses that piloted a virtual care support project, providing insights into crucial elements important to the implementation of similar models and the role of telehealth in bridging healthcare workforce gaps.
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    Measuring rurality in health services research: a scoping review
    (BMC, 2022-11-12) Danek, Robin; Blackburn, Justin; Greene, Marion; Mazurenko, Olena; Menachemi, Nir
    Purpose: This study is a scoping review of the different methods used to measure rurality in the health services research (HSR) literature. Methods: We identified peer-reviewed empirical studies from 2010-2020 from seven leading HSR journals, including the Journal of Rural Health, that used any definition to measure rurality as a part of their analysis. From each study, we identified the geographic unit (e.g., county, zip code) and definition (e.g., Rural Urban Continuum Codes, Rural Urban Commuting Areas) used to classify categories of rurality. We analyzed whether geographic units and definitions used to classify rurality differed by focus area of studies, including costs, quality, and access to care. Lastly, we examined the number of rural categories used by authors to assess rural areas. Findings: In 103 included studies, five different geographic units and 11 definitions were used to measure rurality. The most common geographic units used to measure rurality were county (n = 59, 57%), which was used most frequently in studies examining cost (n = 12, 75%) and access (n = 33, 57.9%). Rural Urban Commuting Area codes were the most common definition used to measure rurality for studies examining access (n = 13, 22.8%) and quality (n = 10, 44%). The majority of included studies made rural versus urban comparisons (n = 82, 80%) as opposed to focusing on rural populations only (n = 21, 20%). Among studies that compared rural and urban populations, most studies used only one category to identify rural locations (n = 49 of 82 studies, 60%). Conclusion: Geographic units and definitions to determine rurality were used inconsistently within and across studies with an HSR focus. This finding may affect how health disparities by rural location are determined and thus how resources and federal funds are allocated. Future research should focus on developing a standardized system to determine under what circumstances researchers should use different geographic units and methods to determine rurality by HSR focus area.
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    The influence of rurality on melanoma diagnosis in Indiana: A retrospective cohort study
    (Wiley, 2024) Xue, Gloria R.; Clark, Marie; Morr, Claudia; Slaven, James E.; Que, Syril Keena T.; Dermatology, School of Medicine
    Background: Research from across the United States has shown that rurality is associated with worse melanoma outcomes. In Indiana, nearly a quarter of all residents live in rural counties and an estimated 2180 cases of melanoma will be diagnosed in 2023. Aims: This study examines how geographical location affects the stage of melanoma diagnosis in Indiana, aiming to identify and address rural health disparities to ultimately ensure equitable care. Methods and results: Demographics and disease characteristics of patients diagnosed with melanoma at Indiana University Health from January 2017 to September 2022 were compared using Students t-tests, Wilcoxon tests, chi-squared or Fisher's exact tests. Patients from rural areas presented with more pathological stage T3 melanomas (15.0% vs. 3.5%, p < 0.001) in contrast to their urban counterparts. Additionally, rural patients presented with fewer clinical stage I melanomas (80.8% vs. 89.3%) and more clinical stage II melanomas (19.2% vs. 8.1%), compared to urban patients, with no stage III (p = 0.028). Concerningly, a significantly higher percentage of the rural group (40.7%) had a personal history of BCC compared to the urban group (22.6%) (p = 0.005) and fewer rural patients (78.0%) compared to urban patients (89.4%) received surgical treatment (p = 0.016). Conclusion: Patients from rural counties in Indiana have higher pathological and clinical stage melanoma at diagnosis compared to patients from urban counties. Additionally fewer rural patients receive surgical treatment and may be at higher risk of developing subsequent melanomas.
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    The VA National TeleNeurology Program implementation: a mixed-methods evaluation guided by RE-AIM framework
    (Frontiers Media, 2023-08-24) Damush, Teresa M.; Wilkinson, Jayne R.; Martin, Holly; Miech, Edward J.; Tang, Qing; Taylor, Stanley; Daggy, Joanne K.; Bastin, Grace; Islam, Robin; Myers, Laura J.; Penney, Lauren S.; Narechania, Aditi; Schreiber, Steve S.; Williams, Linda S.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Introduction: The Veteran Affairs (VA) Office of Rural Health (ORH) funded the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) National TeleNeurology Program (NTNP) as an Enterprise-Wide Initiative (EWI). NTNP is an innovative healthcare delivery model designed to fill the patient access gap for outpatient neurological care especially for Veterans residing in rural communities. The specific aim was to apply the RE-AIM framework in a pragmatic evaluation of NTNP services. Materials and methods: We conducted a prospective implementation evaluation. Guided by the pragmatic application of the RE-AIM framework, we conceptualized a mixed-methods evaluation for key metrics: (1) reach into the Veteran patient population assessed as total NTNP new patient consult volume and total NTNP clinical encounters (new and return); (2) effectiveness through configurational analysis of conditions leading to high Veteran satisfaction and referring providers perceived effectiveness; (3) adoption and implementation by VA sites through site staff and NTNP interviews; (4) implementation success through perceived management, implementation barriers, facilitators, and adaptations and through rapid qualitative analysis of multiple stakeholders' assessments; and (5) maintenance of NTNP through monitoring quarterly TeleNeurology consultation volume. Results: NTNP was successfully implemented in 13 VA Medical Centers over 2 years. The total NTNP new patient consult volume in fiscal year 2021 (FY21) was 836 (58% rurally residing); this increased to 1,706 in fiscal year 2022 (FY22) (55% rurally residing). Total (new and follow-up) NTNP clinical encounters were 1,306 in FY21 and 3,730 in FY22. Overall, the sites reported positive experiences with program implementation and perceived that the program was serving Veterans with little access to neurological care. Veterans also reported high satisfaction with the NTNP program. We identified the patient level of perceived excellent teleneurologist-patient communications, reduced need to drive to get care, and that NTNP provided care that the Veteran otherwise could not access as key factors related to high Veteran satisfaction. Conclusions: The VA NTNP demonstrated substantial reach, adoption, effectiveness, implementation success, and maintenance over the first 2 years of the program. The NTNP was highly acceptable to both the clinical providers making the referrals and the Veterans receiving the referred video care. The pragmatic application of the RE-AIM framework to guide implementation evaluations is appropriate, comprehensive, and recommended for future applications.