Small/Rural Hospitals

HIP specializes in providing individualized quality services to small, community and rural hospitals. We reduce costs by managing operational efficiencies. We offer various options. Below are some of the services we provide:

• Emergency Medicine
• Hospital Medicine
• Combined Emergency and Hospital Medicine

Challenges Small and Rural Hospitals Face and our solutions:

The June 2013 report made jointly by the AHA, HRET and the HPOE, “The Role of Small and Rural Hospitals and Care Systems in Effective Population Health Partnerships” mentioned some of the challenges faced by institutions such as yours. HIP is ready to become your partner in addressing these challenges implementing some of the solutions below:

Financial Pressures:

• Challenge: Disproportionate share of uninsured and near-poor patients.
  • Solution: HIP will assist in development and implementation of programs available to assist lower income patients meet Medicare/Medicaid eligibility. HIP will also assist researching possible governmental and state programs to insure all available means of reimbursement are thoroughly explored. HIP also works closely with client hospitals to ensure current information is gathered for all patients.
• Challenge: Smaller hospitals count on a much smaller patient base to spread the high fixed costs of maintaining the broad range of services required for their population’s health care needs.
  • Solution: HIP provides a hybrid model of multiple service lines and programs to reduce the overall hospital subsidy.

Inadequate Infrastructure and Data

• Challenge: A comparatively bigger challenge in demonstrating meaningful use for health information technology.
  • Solution: HIP will provide physician champion leadership to educate all medical staff as well as assure compliance with CPOE.
• Solution: HIP may also provide protocols (Bridge Orders) to help hospitals satisfy meaningful use criteria.

Lack of Scale and Limited Staffing

• Challenge: Size and location add to challenge of recruiting quality physicians.
  • Solution: HIP will partner with the hospital to recruit physicians who embrace the local community lifestyle.