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Rural Health
Research Gateway

2002 Research Publications

Browse the full list of research publications from the Rural Health Research Centers.

Products – Freely accessible products include policy briefs, fact sheets, full reports, chartbooks, and interactive data websites.

Journal Articles – Articles in peer-reviewed journals may require a subscription or affiliation with a subscribing library. For these publications, Gateway lists the article citation, a brief summary, a link to additional information and access to the full-text of the article, if available.

  • Rural Dimensions of Medicare Reimbursement for Inpatient and Outpatient Institutional and Physician Services
    NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis
    Date: 12/2002
    This report examines major Medicare payment policies from the rural perspective and summarizes major payment policies with explicit rural dimensions that directly affect physicians and hospitals. It looks at whether direct rural impacts are consistent with legislative and regulatory intentions.
  • Accounting for Graduate Medical Education Funding in Family Practice Training
    Journal Article
    WWAMI Rural Health Research Center
    Date: 10/2002
    Medicare provides the majority of funding to support graduate medical education (GME). Following the flow of these funds from hospitals to training programs is an important step in accounting for GME funding.
  • Impact of National Policy on Access to Health Care: The Rural Perspective
    RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
    Date: 10/2002
    This document discusses the current state of financial and geographic access to healthcare in the United States and federal policy.
  • Changing Rural Populations and Impact on Public Policy
    RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
    Date: 10/2002
    This document is from a presentation on population movement in rural areas and health policy issues.
  • Health Services at Risk in "Vulnerable" Rural Places
    RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
    Date: 10/2002
    This brief discusses implications of a method to identify places in rural America at risk of being without healthcare services because they may lack a sufficient number of people to support a practice/provider, they are able to pay the full cost of care, or the population size/composition doesn't warrant the level of services currently available.
  • Family Medicine Training in Rural Areas
    Journal Article
    WWAMI Rural Health Research Center
    Date: 09/2002

    Letter to the Editor: The discipline of family medicine was created in the 1970s, in part, as a way to address the chronic shortage of US rural physicians. It was predicted that the new discipline would augment the supply of rural clinicians because family physicians are much more likely than other physicians to settle in rural areas.

    There is also empirical evidence that training family physicians in rural areas increases the likelihood that residency graduates will choose to settle in rural places. However, the exact proportion of family medicine residency programs located in truly rural parts of the United States remains unknown, as does the extent to which training rural physicians is a priority of existing family medicine residency programs.

  • Tracking Medicaid Managed Care in Rural Communities: A Fifty-State Follow-Up
    Journal Article
    North Carolina Rural Health Research and Policy Analysis Center
    Date: 08/2002
    This article updates a 1997 study examining implementation of rural Medicaid-managed care programs.
  • Update on Medicare+ Choice: Rural Medicare Beneficiaries Enrolled in Medicare+ Choice Plans Through September 2001
    RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
    Date: 08/2002
    This rural policy brief provides an update on Medicare+ Choice Plans, counties enrolled, and data available.
  • Rural-Urban Differences in the Public Health Workforce: Findings From Local Health Departments in Three Rural Western States
    Journal Article
    WWAMI Rural Health Research Center
    Date: 07/2002

    Most local health departments or districts are small and rural; two thirds of the nation's 2832 local health departments serve populations smaller than 50,000 people. Rural local health departments have small staffs and slender budgets, yet they are expected to provide a wide array of services during a period when the healthcare system of which they are a part is undergoing change.

    This study provided quantitative, population-based data on the supply and composition of the rural public health workforce in 3 extremely rural states: Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming. The study focused on the relative supply of personnel in the principal public health occupational categories, differences across states in staffing levels, and difficulties experienced in recruiting and retaining personnel.

  • Federal Funding for Emergency Medical Services
    NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis
    Date: 07/2002
    This report includes recent trend data from 1994 to the present on aggregate federal spending on emergency medical services (EMS) and funding targeted explicitly to rural areas. It also discusses the role various federal agencies have played and traces the history of federal legislation to support EMS programs.
  • State Licensure Laws and the Mental Health Professions: Implications for the Rural Mental Health Workforce
    Maine Rural Health Research Center
    Date: 05/2002
    This paper investigates whether and the extent to which licensure laws that determine the permissible scope of practice for each of these professions may affect the availability of mental health services, particularly in rural communities.
  • Rural Research Focus: Rural Physician Shortages
    WWAMI Rural Health Research Center
    Date: 05/2002
    This paper discusses a model for understanding how many physicians a rural community can support, based on research at the WWAMI Rural Health Research Center.
  • The Role of Community Mental Health Centers as Rural Safety Net Providers
    Maine Rural Health Research Center
    Date: 05/2002
    This paper investigates the extent to which those organizations formerly designated as community mental health centers currently act as a rural mental health safety net, e.g., provide mental health services for free or at reduced charges to rural populations not covered by public or private insurance or grants.
  • Capital Needs of Small Rural Hospitals
    NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis
    Date: 05/2002
    This report examines the capital situation of rural hospitals with fewer than 50 beds to determine the total cost of bringing each facility into compliance with current laws, as well as the facilities' cost of borrowing and ability to borrow.
  • Variance in the Profitability of Small-Town Rural Hospitals (Policy Brief)
    NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis
    Date: 04/2002
    This policy brief discusses why some rural small-town hospitals are financially successful and others struggle with persistent financial difficulties.
  • The Immediate and Future Role of the J-1 Visa Waiver Program for Physicians: The Consequences of Change for Rural Health Care Service Delivery
    RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
    Date: 04/2002
    This paper examines the consequences for the delivery of healthcare services in rural underserved areas if current policies governing the granting of J-1 visa waivers are changed and increases or decreases the numbers of physicians affected.
  • How State Rural Health Directors Obtain Policy-Relevant Research Information
    NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis
    Date: 03/2002
    This policy brief summarizes how information pertinent to rural health policy activities of the state offices is obtained.
  • Family Medicine Residency Training in Rural Areas: How Much Is Taking Place, and Is It Enough to Prepare a Future Generation of Rural Family Physicians?
    WWAMI Rural Health Research Center
    Date: 03/2002
    This paper examines how much rural family practice training is taking place in the United States. The report concludes that to the extent that there is a link between the place of training and future practice, the lack of rural training contributes to the shortage of rural physicians.
  • Essential Research Issues in Rural Health: The State Rural Health Directors' Perspective
    NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis
    Date: 03/2002
    This policy brief describes the key issues confronting state rural health directors. Issues repeatedly raised by directors from a wide variety of states included workforce, telemedicine, emergency medical services, mental health, and lack of local data.
  • Inequitable Access: Medicare+ Choice Program Fails to Serve Rural America
    RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
    Date: 02/2002
    This brief discusses the Medicare+ Choice plan and how it has failed to meet the health issues of Americans.
  • Variance in the Profitability of Small-Town Rural Hospitals (Full Report)
    NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis
    Date: 02/2002
    This report documents the variance in profitability among small-town rural hospitals and evaluates the characteristics that distinguish highly profitable small-town hospitals from struggling ones. It also reports on strategies that small-town hospital administrators are using to achieve financial success.
  • Diabetes and the Rural Safety Net
    Maine Rural Health Research Center
    Date: 01/2002
    This paper investigates the extent to which the rural safety net is able to meet the needs of people with diabetes.
  • Comments on Regulatory and Contractor Reform Legislation
    RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis
    Date: 01/2002
    This rural policy brief informs policy and reports on the rural issue of contractor reform following the passage of the Medicare Regulatory and Contracting Reform Act of 2001. The findings consist of responses from interviews with a range of healthcare professionals and experts.