Rural News
Medicaid is rural America’s financial midwife
Kaiser Health Care | Posted on March 14, 2018Brianna Foster, 23, lives minutes away from Genesis Hospital, the main source of health care and the only hospital with maternity services in southeastern Ohio’s rural Muskingum County. Proximity proved potentially lifesaving last fall when Foster, pregnant with her second child, Holden, felt contractions at 31 weeks — about seven weeks too soon. Genesis was equipped to handle the situation — giving Foster medication and an injection to stave off delivery. After his birth four weeks later – still about a month early, at 5 pounds 12 ounces — Holden was sent to the hospital’s special care nursery for monitoring. Mother and son went home after a few days. “He was pretty small — but he’s picking up weight fast,” said Foster of Holden, now almost 4 months old. Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people — including Foster, who most recently worked as a preschool teacher’s aide — is responsible for much of her good fortune. Started in 1965, the program today is part of the financial bedrock of rural hospitals like Genesis. As treatments have become increasingly sophisticated — and expensive — health care has become inextricably linked to Medicaid in rural areas, which are often home to lower-income and more medically needy people.
Rural Areas Create More Businesses With Greater Staying Power
Wisconsin Public Radio | Posted on March 13, 2018From the way of life to political views, the differences between rural and urban America are well-documented. But an economic development specialist from Madison who studies business trends said the entrepreneurial spirit is higher in rural Wisconsin than it is in the state's urban areas. "I think that's not something that people always think about when they think of rural America or rural Wisconsin," said Tessa Conroy of the University of Wisconsin-Extension who has studied the issue. "These are very entrepreneurial places. They actually have more proprietors per 1,000 residents than our metro areas. It's also the case that businesses survive longer on average in rural areas."
Minn. bill would fine those passing off untrained pets as service animals
Minnesota Public Radio | Posted on March 13, 2018Minnesota lawmakers are considering bipartisan legislation that would criminalize taking an untrained service animal out in public. Separate measures in the state House and Senate would make it a petty misdemeanor, punishable with a $100 fine, to pass off a pet as a trained assistance animal. Subsequent infractions would be considered misdemeanors under the bills. A growing number of states are cracking down on passing off pets as trained service animals. And high-profile incidents have brought public attention to the issue.
Why low milk prices are really bad for New York farms
Democrat and Chronicle | Posted on March 8, 2018With the price of a gallon of milk dropping to the lowest 10 years might be good for consumers, it has meant New York farmers are making less money than they used to. And the impact is apparent: New York has 6,000 fewer dairy farms than it had it in 1989. And the number of dairy farms fell 27 percent over the last decade, records show.The situation is critical for New York's farming industry: Milk is its number one commodity, and the state is the third largest producer in the nation.“Things are pretty dire right now,” said Jerry Simonetty, managing partner of Hudson Valley Fresh Dairy in Poughkeepsie. “Every month, local dairy farmers are losing money.”State officials and farmers point to national and worldwide factors as disrupting New York's milk and dairy industry. In 2016, New York farms earned about $568 million -- about one third of what it was 2013, according the state Farm Bureau.
Mobile Telehospitals get care where it is needed the most
Daily Yonder | Posted on March 8, 2018Two companies joined forces to put a new twist on the old idea of a MASH unit. MASH is more than the name of a long-running television sitcom. It’s a military acronym that means Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. MASH units were comprised of prefab tents, surgeons, nurses, and a truckload of medical supplies. They were designed to get experienced medical personnel closer to the frontlines so the wounded could be treated sooner and with greater success. Today, add telemedicine and community broadband support, and what you have is MAST. AMD Global Telemedicine and Jenysis Global partnered to create MAST units to help in a variety of settings: disaster recovery, medically underserved communities, military installations, and remote work environments. These self-sufficient units can handle the medical issues that arise from disasters. The units get an extra punch when they are deployed with community fiber networks and gigabit horsepower. “When we had hurricanes last year, physicians all over the world were willing to donate time and medical services,” recalls Eric Bacon, AMD President. “But how do you capitalize on their services when they don’t have physical or telephone access to the people in need? You can airdrop people and medical supplies into affected areas. However, this can create major logistical headaches for everyone involved.”The self-contained telehealth clinics, formally called Jenysis Healthcare Solutions, are delivered fully equipped with telemedicine technologies and medical equipment. The units’ completely sustainable infrastructure includes water, solar panels for power, HVAC, satellite communications and ports for broadband connections.
Minnesota settlement with 3M may fix drinking water but not the environment
Minnesota Star Tribune | Posted on March 8, 2018For the foreseeable future, the indestructible chemicals that 3M made and dumped for years at four sites between Woodbury and Grey Cloud Island will continue to move through groundwater into streams and lakes.The $850 million court settlement between Minnesota and 3M that ended a decadelong fight over contaminated groundwater in the east metro will go a long way toward making drinking water safe for some 150,000 residents of Washington County. Already, there is hopeful talk about a new water treatment plant, hooking residents up to municipal water systems instead of private wells, and maybe even drawing water from the Mississippi or St. Croix Rivers instead of from contaminated aquifers. In short, for drinking water there are a lot of workarounds.
Wanted: Rural health care providers, but few answer the call
Daily Yonder | Posted on March 8, 2018Several legislative committees have been examining the problem of health care provider shortages in rural North Carolina. And the answers they're getting point to complicated - and potentially expensive - answers. For years, rural hospitals, clinics and towns have been struggling to recruit physicians, and now, that lack of doctors in some of North Carolina’s more far-flung burgs is showing.“On almost any measures when you look at rural health, rural areas are doing poorer,” health economist Mark Holmes told lawmakers on the legislative Committee on Access to Rural Healthcare in North Carolina in January. She also noted the rural physician workforce is aging, with the average age for non-metropolitan physicians being 52.6 years, compared to urban doctors, who are 48.4 years old on average. Fraher and her colleagues at the Sheps Center studied four years’ worth of medical residents, from 2008-2011 and tracked their specialties and where they were practicing five years later. Their research showed that out of 2,009 physicians who graduated from North Carolina-based residency programs, fewer than half stayed in the state, and only 65 of them (3 percent) were practicing in rural areas. “This is a legislature that wants to know the return on investment, and the data show it’s really low,” Fraher said.
With wind farms, bias is in the eye of the beholder
Popular Science | Posted on March 8, 2018Attraction is subtle and complex, and it can change over time. This insight applies equally to our judgments of food, art, music, architecture and design. Perceptions of beauty are not stable, nor are they universal. Rather, they are constantly shaped by our values, attitudes and beliefs. Nowhere is this more evident than in the debate over wind energy. Depending on your ideas about renewable power, you may view a towering, twirling wind turbine as the paragon of elegance or a hideous monstrosity. For some, Saito explained, lofty, white turbines represent progress, safety, cleanliness. For others, they are a blight on nature and symbol of environmentalism run amok. When they gaze upon the same wind farm, they see two different things.
Trump’s Justice Department sues California over immigration enforcement
NBC News | Posted on March 8, 2018The Justice Department sued California late Tuesday, escalating the battle between the Trump administration and local governments over the issue of providing sanctuaries from a crackdown on immigration enforcement. The lawsuit, which also names Gov. Jerry Brown and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, challenges three recently passed state laws that the Trump administration says hinder enforcement of federal immigration law and endanger federal agents. In signing the bills into law last October, Gov. Brown said they strike "a balance that will protect public safety while bringing a measure of comfort to those families who are now living in fear every day." The laws provide some of the most generous protections in the nation for immigrants facing deportation, but the Justice Department argues that they improperly venture into the enforcement of U.S. immigration law that is strictly a matter for the federal authorities.
One State Forces Opioid Abusers to Get Help.
Pew Charitable Trust | Posted on March 8, 2018In Tampa, police, health care professionals and families have a powerful legal tool not available in many other places: the 1993 Marchman Act. Families and health care professionals can use the state law to “marchman,” or involuntarily commit people into substance abuse treatment when they are deemed a danger to themselves or others. Although the statute applies to all jurisdictions in the state, court records show that it has been employed in Tampa and surrounding Hillsborough County far more than anywhere else. Hillsborough County accounts for less than 7 percent of the state’s population and more than 40 percent of its Marchman commitments. Police use the Marchman Act to pick up people without a court order and take them to a designated stabilization and assessment center. Addiction professionals use the law when a patient fails to show up for treatment. And parents and friends use it when they fear a loved one’s life is at risk.