BACKGROUND In the U.S. diabetes prevalence estimates for adults ≥ 65 years exceed 20%. Rural communities have higher proportions of older individuals and health disparities associated with rural residency place rural communities at risk for a higher burden from diabetes. This study examined the adequacy of care received by older rural adults for their diabetes to determine if older rural adults...

BACKGROUND The problem of access to health care is of growing concern for rural and remote populations. Many Australian rural health funding programs currently use simplistic rurality or remoteness classifications as proxy measures of access. This paper outlines the development of an alternative method for the measurement of access to primary care, based on combining the three key access elemen...

This paper presents the development of a web based telecardiology framework for the diagnosis of cardiac patients in rural areas. Rural health centers, a centralized server and expert cardiologists constitute the framework. Personal details, clinical information and ECG acquired from a patient at the rural center are sent to a centralized server. The server processes the ECG file to extract the...

or the nation, virtual care is the care of the future. For Avera Health, virtual care is the care of the present. Situated in America’s northern plains, Avera Health over the last two decades has grown its own telemedicine solutions to many of the challenges of rural health care. As a result, Avera eCARE, a far-reaching and innovative system of technology, may serve as a national model for heal...

BACKGROUND Understanding the differences in care-seeking pattern is key in designing interventions aimed at improving health-care service delivery, including prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases. The aim of this study was to identify the differences and determinants of care-seeking patterns of urban and rural residents in Abia State in southeast Nigeria. METHODS This was a cross...

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES To redefine the practice of rural nurses and describe a model that conceptualises the capabilities and characteristics required in the rural environment. BACKGROUND The way in which the practice of rural nurses has been conceptualised is problematic. Definitions of rural nursing have been identified primarily through the functional context of rural health service delivery....

OBJECTIVE--To review available evidence on the problems facing rural health care in the UK. In particular, to determine whether the health of rural populations is worse than that of town dwellers and how the quality of health care is influenced by rurality. CRITERIA FOR INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION OF ARTICLES--A wide variety of publications and data sources were used. A number of computerised datab...

Ensuring access to high quality health care in remote and rural settings is particularly challenging. Remote and rural communities require health service models that are designed in and for these settings, and care provided by health practitioners with the requisite knowledge and skills responsive to people's health needs. Studies in many countries have shown that the three factors most strongl...

Preventive care service is considered pivotal on the background of demographic ageing and a rise in chronic diseases in China. The disparity in utilization of preventive care services between urban and rural in China is a serious issue. In this paper, we explored factors associated with urban-rural disparity in utilization of preventive care services in China, and determined how much of the urb...