I believe that WV has been working on teleconferencing to connect experts to rural hospitals. Because it IS a problem when people have to drive to Charleston or Morgantown. And to honest, I’d personally rather see my primary care physician first. He’s very good at saying, “I’m not sure, let me ask someone, which I very much respect.” He’s also one of the med school professors, so I hope he shares that attitude with his students.

Michael’s 2nd job is after hours pager duty for a group of radiologists. At night they keep a radiologist at one hospital and simply send him the images from the outlying hospitals. It works out very well, as they only need to have a single doctor in house after hours (although they have actual doctors on call in case the system goes down or there is an emergency at more assistance is needed.)

And I think the state legislature may have been part of the impetus behind the rural health program–the idea of using state tax money to create all these doctors who then left to go practice somewhere else was getting a little irksome. :)

The other issue is the lack of specialists. PCPs are all well and good, but physician extenders are largely useless for chronic, serious health problems (and in my experience they’re largely useless full stop, but something’s better than nothing, I guess). But PCPs and IMs (who are a little higher up the food chain) wind up working in stuff they’re not trained for in rural areas. When you get IMs working with stuff that’s out of their league, inadvertent malpractice ensues. I’m a big fan of videoconference links in, for example, the hospital in the county seat of a rual area. That way world class experts can have a look at someone without the patient driving four hours to the nearest big city.

Yeah, actually WVU gets held up as an example of what UA should be striving toward regarding healthcare promotion and retention. You’ve got Uncle Byrd, we’ve got Uncle Ted.

I can’t remember the last time someone mentioned chiggers!

Sorry, nothing so exciting as treatment for chiggers. It’s simply getting medical professionals (MDs, PDs, OTs, DDS, etc) to live and practice in rural areas.

You might be a redneck if “chiggers” is one of your top four health concerns….

;-)

I kid because I’m from there…