Cleft lip and palate is quite common in Nepalese population residing in hilly areas and interior of the country. Nepalese doctor with limited resources and fund and International aided team of fully equipped doctors from developed world conduct operative procedure in the centre or district hospital setup quite frequently. But very few patients will come to the hospital for treatment as it is no...

The US Congress established the designation of Critical Access Hospitals in 1997, recognising rural hospitals as vital links to health for rural and underserved populations. The intent of the reimbursement system is to improve financial performance, thereby reducing hospital closures. Informatics applications are thought to be tools that can enable the sustainability of such facilities. The aim...

BACKGROUND Due to large geographical distances, the telephone is central to enabling rural Australian communities to access care from their local health service. While there is a history of rural nurses providing care via the telephone, it has been a highly controversial practice that is not routinely documented and little is known about how the practice is governed. The lack of knowledge regar...

There has been a growing interest in interhospital patient transfers. However, much of this research has focussed on the criteria for transferring patients; very little research is available about the transfer process itself. The purpose of this preliminary study was to describe the process and support technology used to transfer neonatal intensive care patients from metropolitan and rural hosp...

BACKGROUND Access to rural health services is compromised in many countries including Australia due to workforce shortages. The issues that consequently impact on equity of access and sustainability of rural and remote health services are complex. DISCUSSION The purpose of this paper is to describe a number of approaches from the literature that could form the basis of a more integrated appro...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Unsafe injections in health settings contribute to a large burden of preventable blood-borne diseases. Current strategies to enhance injection safety in India almost exclusively target the formal health sector. However, injections are provided not only by doctors and nurses in the formal sector, but also by practitioners from the informal sector, such as traditional heal...

In Lithuania, as in the most societies around the world, the Internet and other information communication technologies (ICT) are mainly used by young, educated, well paid and urban consumers. Elderly, low-educated, low-paid and rural residents are among those who use the Internet the least. In our post-modern network society they are at the risk of social exclusion. This paper is aimed at the a...

Consulting psychologists have recognized the importance of providing comprehensive consultation and clinical services for consumers with special needs. Often because of distance and access to consultation services, remote and underserved populations may not have the necessary access to consultant specialists in psychology and other disciplines. Such services are now available through an innovat...

One commonly discussed benefit of broadband access in rural America is the potential for telemedicine visits that allow rural residents to take advantage of urbanized medical services. While the primary benefit of telemedicine is often viewed as improved health care access, the availability of these services also offers significant economic contributions to the local community. Site visits to 2...

From 1980 to 1999, rural designated hospitals closed at a disproportionally high rate. In response to this emergent threat to healthcare access in rural settings, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 made provisions for the creation of a new rural hospital--the critical access hospital (CAH). The conversion to CAH and the associated cost-based reimbursement scheme significantly slowed the closure ra...