State and local healthcare leaders, elected officials, providers and others came together Thursday to address the myriad challenges facing rural healthcare today.

The North Central Pennsylvania Regional Healthcare Summit, “Overcoming Regional Rural Health Challenges,” was held in Bromeley Theater at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, featuring Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Secretary Dr. Valerie A. Arkoosh and Pennsylvania Department of Aging Secretary Jason Kavulich.

The summit aimed to spark regional collaboration that aligns limited resources, builds partnerships and creates the workforce pipeline needed for lasting rural healthcare and economic vitality, the event program stated. Such collaboration allows the region to “speak in one voice” when advocating for state and federal policies or legislation that increases access to healthcare in rural areas like McKean, Potter, Elk and Cameron counties.

Professionals broke into workgroups focused on four themes: workforce and pipeline development, women’s health and maternity care/birthing centers, access to care and services and emergency medical services/transportation. The groups identified goal states, as well as barriers to and strategies for achieving their ideal results.

Some of each group’s top takeaways were:

Workforce  

• Expand local retention initiatives
• Increase career exploration and development resources
• Behavioral health and psychology loan forgiveness

Access to care  

• Explore alternative payment model(s) for rural health
• Support policy changes for care delivery (e.g., telehealth) and improve Medicaid reimbursement
• Launch a statewide public health education campaign

Women’s health

• Keep funds flowing to small hospitals and rural clinics, support new ways to pay
• Create family-friendly services through public and private partnerships
• Grow telemedicine, remote monitoring and mobile health programs

EMS/Transportation 

• Training opportunities available in communities and schools
• Lack of personnel and consistent funding — the cost of readiness and reimbursement
• EMS has become a catch-all; non-emergency calls occupy crews when real emergencies come in

The groups were then tasked with generating next steps for each of their focus areas, and participants were polled to prioritize these recommendations, many of which were related to ongoing funding and improved reimbursements, payment models, collaboration across organizations and regions and, overall, doing things differently than they’ve historically been done.

The day’s panels comprised elected officials, health system professionals and policy and administrative experts. Legislative participants included state Sen. Cris Dush, R-Brookville; state Rep. Martin Causer, R-Turtlepoint; Brad Moore, with U.S. Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson’s office; and Kelsey Griswold-Berger, with U.S. Sen. David McCormick’s office.

Health systems were represented by Patti Jackson-Gheris, UPMC North Central PA and UPMC Williamsport president; Dr. Trina Alba, chief medical officer with Penn Highlands Healthcare; and Stephanie Watkins, senior vice president of advocacy and policy for the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania.

The panel was moderated by Lisa Davis, director of the Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health, and comprised Kavulich; George Garrow, CEO of Primary Health Network; and Arkoosh.

Kavulich said, “There are no bad ideas. There are good ideas in every community across Pennsylvania. Rural Pennsylvania is different than urban Pennsylvania, and we need (rural) input to build the right kind of solutions so that we build the right kind of system that serves everybody.”
Arkoosh said, “We are thinking about … new models and how we can take the resources that we do have and perhaps put them together a little bit differently.

“We all need to look at what is in our region — How can we look across our county lines, across our municipal lines?” she continued. “How can we get our local governments working together to pool what we have and make the absolute best of every piece of it?”

State Sen. Cris Dush, R-Brookville, offers closing remarks.

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Dush encouraged those in attendance, “Every life, whether it’s in rural Pennsylvania or the cities, matters. Continue down this path. Continue working together. This isn’t a Democrat or a Republican issue. This is a life and death issue and we need to start treating it as such and coming together, unified, in order to help fix it.”

He said that a recent case of infant mortality might have been related to the drive time for care and that six babies have been born in an ambulance this year in Elk County alone.

“When people talk about healthcare deserts and maternity care deserts — deserts are a natural thing,” Dush observed. “This is a man-made crisis, and we have to recognize that.”

He emphasized those who gathered at Pitt-Bradford for the day-long summit and their willingness to work together. “That’s going to be what makes this effective.”

Dush, who comes from a U.S. Air Force Special Operations background, said, “I used to say, don’t leave anybody behind. Rural Pennsylvania’s been left behind. Keep up the fight.”