Michigan’s rural communities need a voice focused on issues unique to rural areas to represent and advocate for them.  Often, policies and reimbursement methods are not responsive to the needs of rural communities and healthcare delivery systems.  To forge the policies it needs, rural Michigan must have a voice that is heard in the right places, at the right times.  Consider these facts about rural Michigan: 

• Michigan’s 58 rural counties are diverse, as are the communities within them.  Each has a unique employer base, differing proximity to other towns and cities, and ethnic and racial characteristics
• The rural populations are older, have more chronic disease, lower income, and less education
• Health care delivery providers with smaller operating margins in rural communities.  As a result, they are more significantly impacted by even small changes in the healthcare workforce, availability of employer-based health insurance, government-sponsored healthcare, reimbursement, the regulatory environment, and other pressures
• The ratio of physicians to residents is far lower in rural communities, and growing shortages in nurses, pharmacists and other health care personnel pose significant threats to the health of rural communities
• Access to healthcare, already a complex tangle of issues, is further complicated by such factors as distance to services, voluntary emergency services, and confidentiality issues
• Access to health services is vital to the economic well-being of rural communities.  Health care is an economic engine that generates significant revenue to rural communities.  Every health care dollar spent locally recycles through that local economy one and a half times
• Availability of health care is directly tied to the availability of jobs in rural areas.  The presence of health services is second only to schools as a quality of life indicator to businesses considering location