Rural and Community Health Institute
Goals and Objectives

Become a center of excellence in rural and community health care. Facilitate coordination of multiple HSC components and other Texas A&M University System researchers who facilitate and enhance the knowledge of rural and community healthcare services. Facilitate educational and commercial partnerships that will develop appropriate services, tools and technology to accomplish the mission.

Partners

Establish partnerships with rural and community hospitals, clinics, and healthcare groups throughout Texas. HSC-RCHI envisions multiple academic, professional and business partners to accomplish its goals.

Education

Coordinate training of healthcare professionals at all levels and in all disciplines to increase the proportion who choose to practice in rural and underserved communities, with a significant portion of the training taking place in the rural communities of Texas. Other educational components are to provide continuing medical education opportunities, selected simulator training courses and patient education.

Services

Provide assistance for a variety of services to rural community facilities to support rural healthcare delivery of access, medical staff activities, peer review, continuous quality improvement, patient safety, clinical outcomes measurement, utilization review, benchmarking and other needs as delineated by the facility.

Database Management and Analysis

Provide rural healthcare data for research education and policy direction. Provide partnering facilities access to healthcare data analysis as requested. Facilitate evaluation of cost effectiveness, benchmarking clinical outcomes, patient safety and quality of care in a reliable, valid and reproducible way.

 

Health Care Services Partnerships

Facilitate healthcare services, healthcare access, healthcare cost-effectiveness and healthcare disparity research between RCHI community partners, Texas A&M Health Science Center and Texas A&M University researchers.

Comprehensive Approach

Develop a comprehensive approach to rural and community health training, service, education, research and policy.

Promote Rural Health Care Professionals

Provide a stream of healthcare professionals choosing a rural practice location by providing education over the full scope of primary care in a wide range of rural sites.

Rural Health Care Training

Provide rural training opportunities for primary care residents in HSC programs, including coordination with other Texas primary care residency training programs to provide rural training experience for their residents.

Rural Nursing Professional Training

Provide rural training opportunities for nurses and other healthcare professionals in HSC programs and in partnering rural and community facilities.

Rural Quality and Patient Safety Improvement

Provide expert training or assistance in quality and patient safety evaluation and analysis to facilitate rural and community facility benchmarking, quality improvement, patient safety and clinical outcomes evaluation, healthcare services cost effectiveness, root cause analysis, prospective failure, mode and effect analysis, medical staff affairs, healthcare professional, and patient satisfaction analysis.

Development of Services and Tools

Facilitate development of services, tools, techniques and training requested or required by our rural and community healthcare partners with other interested parties.

Aggregated Database Management

Provide aggregated database management and analysis to facilitate rural and community facility benchmarking, quality improvement, patient safety and clinical outcomes evaluation, healthcare services cost effectiveness, healthcare professional, and patient satisfaction analysis.