When we discuss hospital networks, doctors, and clinician needs, you imagine a busy practice or hospital in a town or city. But often overlooked are rural hospital networks stationed in less populated areas, sometimes the only emergency and medical service available for dozens of miles. These rural health systems often face different challenges than their counterparts, especially when it comes to emergency demand and infrastructure.
The obstacles and struggles facing rural medicine
Different complications and challenges face rural medical networks absent in typical settings. For instance, lack of resources comes to mind. A rural hospital may not have the same emergency services available, such as fewer ambulance vehicles, fewer staff, funds, and equipment for both budget and population reasons.
But those aren’t the only challenges, and if anything, are just the start of issues rural practices confront. In said rural areas, lower economic opportunities, reduced wages, and wealth inequality are major challenges to local populations. Poverty means individuals and families cannot seek routine medical care, often responding to a health crisis only in an emergency. That’s a costly way to go about healthcare, but a situation Americans find themselves ensnared in, especially in rural areas.
Lower economic opportunities impact healthcare too. Income inequality and healthcare networks with reduced resources do not have the same job opportunities for example. Locating talent and skilled staff is increasingly hard as well, both for financial and geographic reasons. These practices like any medical servicer rely on veterans, experts, and trained staff.
And, training and maintaining staff is a long, arduous process. Specialized doctors and positions typically require months of training, and whether they stay within their area is uncertain. Some will seek opportunities elsewhere, starting the whole process over again and leaving rural medical networks hobbled for indeterminate periods.
In those situations, the general public holds the bill. Rural communities will have to travel long distances for medical visits. They may also lack access to specialists, making health complications even more expensive in case of an emergency event.
Aiding Rural Healthcare
With geographical complications like vast landscapes, lack of roads in some areas, and vacancies of specialists or other healthcare professionals, rural medicine needs all the tools it can get. But what resources exist for both rural healthcare and civilians?
Building up medical infrastructure for these vulnerable communities is important, but that’s far easier said than done. While we’re optimistic, we also realize that massive capital investments in restructuring rural areas for improved medical access are probably not on the fast track. However, that doesn’t mean rural medicine is out of luck, and there are a few handy technological innovations to make things easier. For example, remote services and virtualized infrastructure are handy alternatives to traditional healthcare. If there’s sufficient bandwidth, doctors can offer virtual visits to patients challenged by physical distance. Just as well, virtualized infrastructure can offer the means and resources to update a medical network without heavy investment in hardware.
When it comes to saving time, other services like Dragon Medical One’s dictation software are useful too. If you’re not familiar, medical dictation software allows healthcare providers to dictate (speak) the patient encounter documentation three times faster than typing, cutting out the need to complete charts after hours. Given the already limited resources of rural medicine, something that can save them tremendous amounts of time is an important advantage.
Even hospital and medical networks with all the resources at their disposal still struggle with hundreds of hours lost dealing with paperwork. But accurate dictation software such as Dragon One enables them to see more patients, aid worker burnout, and apply care at a faster rate. While the Dragon dictation software isn’t a direct injection of capital, it’s a powerful time-saving resource. The average of two hours a day saved on charting by using Dragon Medical One allows clinicians to see more patients in a day and not burn out from unnecessary amounts of typing notes.
Conclusion
The harsher reality is rural areas suffer when it comes to available healthcare. Physical distance, economic hardship, and fewer medical resources compound to make routine care very difficult. While reconfiguring rural infrastructure requires serious intervention, there are still plentiful options and tools to help rural medicine. Dragon Medical One provides an accessible way to accomplish dictation and complete medical encounter documentation in a fraction of the time.
