Federal Office of Rural Health Policy Briefs
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Browsing Federal Office of Rural Health Policy Briefs by Subject "Allied health professionals"
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Item Community Health Worker Roles and Responsibilities in Rural and Urban America(2019-11) Callaghan, Timothy H.; Washburn, David J.; Schmit, Carson D.; Martinez, Denise; Thompson, Emily; Lafleur, Megan; Ruiz, ZuleymaThis project investigated the Community Health Worker (CHW) field in rural and urban environments using a series of focus groups of CHWs in four states. Our findings suggest that there is not a "typical" CHW. Despite this, our results show that CHWs in rural and urban areas share two commonalities—their role as bridge figures between communities and needed resources and their unique position in helping the healthcare industry address social determinants of health. An important difference we observed is that rural CHWs took on a more "generalist" role due to lack of resources, programs, and services, whereas urban CHWs took on a more "specialist" role because of the sometimes substantial amount of available resources, programs, and services.Item The Development of Telehealth Laws in the U.S. from 2008 to 2015: A Legal landscape(2019-11) Schmit, Carson D.; Ferdinand, Alva O.; Callaghan, Timothy H.; Kageyama, Mariko; Khodakarami, Nima; Morrisey, Michael A.Rapid technological advances make telehealth a moving target for regulators. This study examines the scope and evolving nature of telehealth statutes (i.e., laws passed by state legislatures) and regulations (i.e., laws promulgated by state executive agencies) in the U.S. Our research aims to understand changes in telehealth laws over time (2008-2015), variations in legal frameworks established across the U.S., and the extent that state laws regulate the primary care delivery through the use of telehealth. We found that the number of states with broadly worded laws that authorize a variety of healthcare professional to provide care via telehealth more than tripled between 2008 and 2015 (from 3 to 10). A legal analysis suggests that enabling regulations on telehealth payment for Medicaid are relatively rare in the eastern U.S. and that laws governing private insurance telehealth payments are more geographically defused. Examining differences in the adoption of telehealth laws by state proportions on rurality and urbanicity indicates that states with large urban populations also see the utility of a regulatory environment supports telehealth as an avenue for increased access to care for rural residents.