Context: The Veterans Health Administration (VA) provides comprehensive health care services to veterans across the United States. Recently, the VA established an Office of Rural Health to address the health care needs of rural veterans. Purpose: To review the literature on rural veterans' health care needs in order to identify areas for future…

Medicare's Incentive Payment (MIP) program provides a 10% bonus payment to providers who treat Medicare patients in rural and urban areas where there is a shortage of generalist physicians. Purpose: To examine the experience of Alaska, Idaho, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Washington with the MIP program. We determined the program's…

Context: The rural Black Belt of Alabama is among the poorest areas of the nation. Poverty, lack of health infrastructure, and health disparities involving HIV/AIDS and other diseases reflect the lower life expectancy of people in the region. The Black Belt region has the highest HIV rates in rural America. Purpose: Using Alabama as a case…

Passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) has created interest in how the legislation will affect access to prescription drugs among rural beneficiaries. Policy attention has focused to a much lesser degree on the implications of the MMA for the financial viability of rural pharmacies. This article…

Critical access hospitals (CAHs) are a federal Medicare category for isolated rural facilities with 15 or fewer acute care beds that receive cost-based reimbursement from Medicare. Purpose: This study examines the role of foreign-born international medical graduates (IMGs) in the staffing of CAHs. Methods: Chief executive officers (CEOs) of CAH…

Context: Founded in 1971 with state funding to increase the number of primary care physicians in rural Minnesota, the Rural Physician Associate Program (RPAP) has graduated 1,175 students. Third-year medical students are assigned to primary care physicians in rural communities for 9 months where they experience the realities of rural practice with…

Access to transportation to transverse the large distances between residences and health services in rural settings is a necessity. However, little research has examined directly access to transportation in analyses of rural health care utilization. This analysis addresses the association of transportation and health care utilization in a rural…