Georgia Rural Health Innovation Center finds solutions tailored to rural areas

In rural Georgia, where the closest hospital can be more than an hour away, folks have become “resigned to the fact that they don’t have access” to healthcare.

The Georgia Rural Health Innovation Center, housed at Mercer University, is looking to change that by creating distinctly rural health solutions for and by rural communities.

“It doesn’t need to be that way,” said Glenda Grant, the executive director of the Innovation Center. “They need to have the hope that doesn’t have to be your fate, there are means and ways and people that care out there.”

Mercer originally pitched the state an idea for a fund for rural health solutions and eventually won funding to build the Georgia Rural Health Innovation Center (GRHIC) in 2019.

Of the 159 counties in Georgia, 120 are considered rural, and all 120 have hospitals, clinics or medical centers that participate in at least one of the programs created by the GRHIC.

The center aims to address 10 “grand challenges” facing rural Georgia, including mental health, health literacy, rural occupational health and health care
infrastructure.

Dr. Jean Sumner is the dean of the Mercer University School of Medicine and principal investigator at the GRHIC. She said often healthcare solutions and programs designed outside of rural Georgia have lacked insights specific to those areas.

“A lot of people think, take a
borough in New York, and you solve the problems there and stick it in a rural county, you cannot,” she said. “It is a different dynamic. It is a different economy.”

The innovation center was initially tasked with training a number of healthcare leaders across nonprofit hospitals in the state, implementing a new training curriculum to explain the responsibilities and rules when running a hospital.

During COVID-19, the center trained 626 hospital leaders, 100% of all hospital board members in rural Georgia.

Kerry Trapnell, the chief administrative officer of Aletheia Health Partners, manages Washington County Regional Medical Center and Monroe County Hospital. He said the GRHIC and Mercer have helped them find funding and collect data and have provided a number of helpful connections.

“They consistently are just an amazing resource to our rural hospitals,” he said. “It is very easy to get a hold of them and [to] have that resource, that is an amazing addition for rural hospitals.”

Grant said the purpose of the center is to create “sustainable” solutions by forming lasting relationships and giving communities the tools they need to solve problems using their own resources.

One of those resources is doctoral candidates from rural Georgia communities who study at the Mercer University School of Medicine and return to their hometown.

While the majority of doctors in the United States are specialists, Sumner said, rural communities require general practitioners “with a broader range of skills” since they might be the only doctor in a given community.

The school of medicine “preferentially accept[s] rural Georgians,” Grant said. More than 80% of graduates go on to serve rural or underserved communities in Georgia, according to a Mercer Medicine fact sheet.

“Knowing that you’re being taken care of by a doctor that knows the area, that understands the area, that knows you, it’s different,” Trapnell said. “We see it’s better for outcomes. We see it keeps rural hospitals open as patients want to come be treated by doctors they know.”

The center has also joined several initiatives and alliances including the Georgia Agricultural Wellness Alliance, The Kids Alliance for Better Care and the Christopher Wolf Crusade an organization combating opioid abuse by educating communities and teaching about other ways to relieve pain.

In partnership with the CWA, the center most recently kicked off its Life Care Specialist pilot program, which introduces a new kind of medical professional specializing in ways to reduce pain and educating on the dangers of opioid addiction. 

So far five hospitals have taken part in the pilot program at no cost. The center has also distributed NarCan to rural communities to combat overdoses. 

“As big a problem as opioid misuse is in a city, it’s worse in rural counties because they have less resources,” Grant said. 

The center is also working to increase access to pediatric care with the Kids Alliance for Better Care, as currently 63 rural Georgia counties do not have a pediatrician, Sumner said. 

Among other things, KidsABC has introduced telehealth to several hospitals for pediatric care and helped provide special equipment to ERs to serve pediatric patients through their emergency department collaboration.

The initiative currently spans 14 hospitals around rural Georgia, including Washington County Regional Medical Center.

Trapnell said with rural hospitals it’s hard to budget for equipment and services to treat rare pediatric medical cases — they receive those patients so infrequently — but it’s nonetheless important to treat patients locally.

“There’s always an excitement level when you hear from Mercer and the innovation center and the tools that they have at their fingertips to help us,” he said.

Sumner said she hopes the center can create models that will be applicable in other rural areas in the world.

“It’s incredibly fulfilling to work in a rural community,” Grant said. “You’re appreciated, you make a difference, you can see it readily.”