Rural healthcare in America is facing an unprecedented crisis. Over 30% of rural hospitals—more than 700 facilities nationwide—are at risk of closure, with half projected to shut down over the next two to three years, according to an August 2024 Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform report. As rural hospitals and clinics struggle to operate, patients are forced to travel longer distances, creating barriers to timely diagnosis, preventive care and chronic disease management. Not only do these closures threaten access to basic care for millions of Americans but risk worsening disparities in already underserved communities.
Rural healthcare providers face a complex array of challenges. Many struggle to meet federal reporting standards while lacking the necessary resources to close care gaps, track outcomes, and effectively manage chronic conditions. Compounding these issues are smaller staff sizes, fewer resources, and limited access to health information technology. Additionally, inadequate reimbursement rates fail to offset the higher costs of care in rural areas, where smaller patient volumes generate less revenue. Fixed expenses—such as staffing emergency departments—remain constant, placing even greater strain on already thin margins.
Rising Challenges and Widening Disparities in Rural Health
Rural health centers are the lifeblood of their communities, often serving as the only source of care for residents. From emergency to routine primary care, these facilities ensure services are available in areas where access is limited. Beyond care, rural hospitals are critical economic and social pillars, providing jobs, supporting local businesses, and fostering community well-being. When rural clinics close, local economies suffer and health inequities widen.
For rural providers, challenges are pervasive and multifaceted:
- Access Barriers: Patients in rural areas often face long travel distances and limited transportation options, resulting in delayed diagnoses, untreated chronic conditions, and missed opportunities for preventive care.
- Resource Constraints: Many rural providers operate on extremely thin margins, with fewer staff, smaller budgets, and limited access to modern health information technology—hindering their ability to deliver efficient and effective care.
- Administrative Burdens: Meeting reporting requirements, such as HEDIS, STARS or UDS, requires substantial administrative effort, which small rural facilities often lack the staff or capacity to manage.
- Chronic Disease Management Challenges: Conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and behavioral health disorders are especially difficult to manage in rural settings, where both patients and providers face resource and access limitations.
These interconnected challenges highlight the need for innovative solutions that streamline operations, reduce administrative burdens, and empower care teams to focus on improving patient outcomes.
Harnessing Data and Innovation to Strengthen Rural Care
Rural health centers face unique challenges in delivering high-quality care, from limited resources to geographic barriers. Azara DRVS is designed to help providers overcome these challenges by harnessing the power of data to improve care delivery, close gaps, and achieve quality reporting goals.
Using a centralized population health and value-based care platform with innovative data models, DRVS empowers rural health centers to:
- Maximize Every Patient Visit: In rural communities where access is limited and patient visits may be infrequent, every appointment matters. The DRVS PVP tool equips providers with the tools to prepare for each visit by identifying care gaps, chronic disease risks, and preventive care needs in advance. This ensures providers can address outstanding issues efficiently during each appointment, maximizing the value of every patient interaction.
- Close Care Gaps with Patient Outreach: Access barriers often prevent rural patients from seeking timely care. Azara Patient Outreach’s (APO) automated tools enable practices to engage patients proactively with appointment reminders, overdue screening notifications, and vaccination alerts. These targeted efforts help bring patients into the practice, improve chronic disease management, and strengthen preventive care outcomes.
- Simplify Quality Reporting: Meeting federal quality standards, such as Uniform Data System (UDS) measures, is a significant challenge for rural providers with limited resources. Azara’s centralized reporting and analytics platform automates data collection and tracking, providing practices with real-time insights on performance metrics to streamline reporting of standardized measures and reduce administrative burdens.
- Advance Behavioral Health Integration: Behavioral health is a growing concern for rural communities, and DRVS supports providers in addressing this critical need. The platform allows practices to track behavioral health metrics, coordinate care across providers, and identify patients in need of mental health services, fostering a more integrated approach to care.
- Enhancing Chronic Disease Management: Managing chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension is particularly challenging in rural areas. Registries and dashboards within the DRVS platform can monitor metrics such as A1c levels for patients living with diabetes or hypertension—ensuring timely interventions that improve long-term outcomes for high-risk populations.
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Support for Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH): Successfully transforming your practice to deliver patient-centered, whole-person care requires population health tools that provide actionable insights to support care teams and drive value-based care initiatives. Azara DRVS is also pre-validated to support PCMH recognition and annual reporting.
Azara DRVS empowers rural health centers to deliver on their mission of keeping care close to home while overcoming the challenges of limited resources and geographic barriers.
Sustaining Rural Healthcare for the Future
Rural health centers are vital to the well-being of their communities, often serving as the only source of care for underserved populations. However, the unique challenges they often face—limited resources, access barriers, and complex quality reporting requirements—require innovative approaches and tools to ensure they can continue to meet the needs of their patients.
By adopting data-driven tools and focusing on population-centered strategies, rural care providers can track chronic conditions, close gaps and strengthen the foundation of their communities, even in the most resource-constrained settings.
