The Center concentrates its efforts on helping hospitals and communities recognize that their primary priority is to determine how to sustain critical health care services locally. This may not include maintaining a hospital, but rather “right-sizing” care to match the resources, demographics, geography, and availability of providers in the community. The Center works with hospitals and their communities to determine feasible health care options that will be supported by the community, meet community needs, and most importantly offer local, quality care.
Health care providers and communities need to adjust to ensure ability to retain access to health care in rural America. ARCHI has fifteen years of experience working with rural hospitals to identify issues and develop unique solutions. This experience, combined with our expertise and collaborative partners across the nation, firmly establish ARCHI as the right organization to help rural hospitals via the Center for Optimizing Rural Health.
138 hospital closures since 2010 as of today leaving 138 communities looking for ways to retain access to health care. Rural facilities that have remained open are facing increasing legislative, regulatory, and fiscal challenges with an estimated 50% of them being financially fragile.
The Center works with rural hospitals across the United States that are vulnerable to closure with the overall goal to ensure continued access to health care for the regions they serve. The Center provides technical assistance via a multi-tier system of support that includes intensive on-site technical assistance for 5 hospitals per year, remotely facilitated assistance for up to 25 hospitals per year, and self-directed access to best practices, resources, and tools (a knowledge repository) for all interested communities. Technical assistance by The Center’s team of subject matter experts will help communities determine the right size health care delivery system that meets the needs of their population and information on how to implement or retain those access points.
