The Membership Organization of State Offices of Rural Health
You’re invited to partner with NOSORH to Celebrate the Power of Rural and help build the capacity of State Offices of Rural Health (SORH). NOSORH is offering new and exciting ways for your organization to support the work of all 50 SORH.
Explore a sponsorship level that meets your needs and showcase your organization at the NOSORH Annual Meeting in Savannah, Georgia on September 6-7, 2017. The Annual Meeting brings together over 150 attendees, including representation from all 50 SORH staff and partners from across the country who are dedicated to improving access to quality rural health care. Don’t miss this opportunity to network, share resources, and create collaborative solutions.
In addition to recognition at the Annual Meeting, sponsors will become a valued partner in National Rural Health Day on November 16 and gain recognition through the activities developed to promote the #PowerofRural campaign. Building on the success of National Rural Health Day, the #PowerofRural campaign will bring together rural voices to educate, collaborate, innovate and communicate to improve the health of rural people and ensure vital rural providers and communities.
NOSORH greatly appreciates the support from partners over the years through various sponsorship contributions. No matter what level of sponsorship you select, know that your contributions will make a difference!
Click below to view the 2017 Sponsor & Partner Opportunity Prospectus and learn how you can support the mission of NOSORH. Click here to register as a sponsor
Corporate sponsors are not only an important resource for funding for the mission of NOSORH, they are experts in rural health and often partners to the State Offices of Rural Health. NOSORH thanks the DentaQuest Institute for their continued support of our mission.
The DentaQuest Institute (DQI) is a nonprofit entity with a mission of promoting optimal oral health through quality care and prevention. As the current oral health care delivery system is becoming more person-centered and prevention-focused, health care professionals are better able to not only stabilize disease, but more importantly, prevent it from happening. DQI’s unique, hands-on approach of working directly with their partners allows them to facilitate oral health and support partners’ efforts to improve patient care.
“When it comes to our partnerships, we use the definition that if you care about somebody’s health, you care about their oral health,” said Dr. Sean Boynes, Director of Interprofessional Practice at DQI. “It’s not just a dentist who is an oral health care provider, it’s anybody who takes an interest in facilitating overall health, recognizing that the teeth and gums are part of the body.”
Included in DQI’s list of partners are State Offices of Rural Health (SORH). The Institute has been around for a while, but their focus on rural health is new. Their first initiative with a specific focus on rural health is MORE Care (Medical Oral Expanded Care). The idea behind MORE Care is to address rural health disparities by reaching out to primary care providers in rural health clinics (RHC) to integrate oral health within the practice and enable the coordination of care by linking them with dental care teams in rural communities.
DQI partnered with the South Carolina Office of Rural Health and Medical University of South Carolina for Phase 1 of the More Care initiative in 2015. Using their experiences from Phase 1, MORE Care began Phase 2 of the pilot by expanding into Colorado and Pennsylvania. With support from the Colorado Rural Health Center and the Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health, they are further examining oral health integration strategies and the development of dental referral networks. In addition, toolkits and online practicums are currently being developed with the goal of eventually employing them across the country.
“The ultimate goal of the project is to form interprofessional oral health networks comprised of care pathways, which are both integrated and coordinated, for patients,” said Boynes. “At the end of the day, we think about the rural person and their ability to access a completed care pathway. We see RHCs as leaders in these rural communities to help facilitate this with their dental care team partners.”
Dr. Boynes, who previously practiced at a rural FQHC in South Carolina, understands the challenges that face rural and underserved communities and brings that experience to his work at DQI.
“The states are very different and the rural environment is not an easy environment to conquer, but the Institute shares the interest of the SORHs and NOSORH to improve the health of rural communities in the United States. We’re committed to going into rural communities and trying to change them on a wide scope to improve their health.”
The first white paper on the MORE Care project is slated to be released later this month. For more information on the DentaQuest Institute, please visit their website at www.dentaquestinstitute.org. For a full listing of NOSORH sponsors, click here.
Corporate sponsors are not only an important resource for funding for the mission of NOSORH, they are experts in rural health and often partners to the State Offices of Rural Health. This important work will be featured in a series of articles over the next few months.
Many NOSORH members are familiar with iVantage Health Analytics as the analytics firm powering the NOSORH Performance Leadership recognitions. The company’s Hospital Strength INDEX® is the basis of many of rural healthcare’s most prominent awards and is used by organizations such as NOSORH and NRHA in support of their advocacy and legislative initiatives.
Each year, iVantage Health Analytics develops the Rural Relevance Study: Vulnerability to Value, as a means of quantifying the rural hospital value proposition and offering analytic transparency around the landscape’s defining factors. Today’s rural hospital leaders face unprecedented complexity and uncertainty, and iVantage has helped more than 750 rural and CAHs integrate sophisticated analytics for benchmarking performance, which aid in their strategic decision making process. iVantage helps hospitals deliver high quality care at low cost to maintain their status as the cornerstone of their communities.
iVantage has a strong track record in numerous states for providing detailed reports to state partners to satisfy Flex grant requirements. They have developed proprietary technology to aggregate individual hospital performance data into simple, easy-to-read reports for state partners that exceed grant requirements and provide valuable local and national benchmarks for use in network meetings and other activities.
Since 2009, iVantage has been working with the Ohio State Office of Rural Health (OHSORH) through the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) to develop an Ohio CAH network collaborative centered on performance benchmarking, monitoring and improvement. Ohio CAHs perform above the national benchmarks in almost all areas of focus, including Quality and Financial performance. iVantage’s work with the OHSORH helps support the exceptional performance of the 33 CAHs across the state of Ohio. A CEO/CFO work group for Financial and Operational Performance Improvement was also developed in Ohio in order to “move the needle” and to realize improvement to the bottom line. Financial data on all Ohio CAHs was captured and a monthly data feed was instituted, serving as a jumping off point for the true performance improvement work to follow. National, regional, state, and hospital-specific benchmarks were created and targets were established for improvement. Based on the findings, the CEO/CFO work group determined cost efficiency and productivity as well as revenue cycle improvements through managed contract optimization.
One Ohio CAH in particular, The Morrow County Hospital, has embraced benchmarking data to plan and execute at both a local hospital-level and at a network-level. iVantage has helped Morrow County Hospital target under-performing measures (Benefits, Supplies, Lab, Productivity, etc.), removing as much as $1,500,000 in excess cost, without mandates. This type of work is paramount to preparing Ohio CAHs for Cost Transparency, which is critical in the new health care environment.
“Intuitively, you always think you can do better. But actually putting your finger on where the opportunity might lie was difficult. With iVantage, we’ve been able to compare ourselves to other like hospitals,” said CJ Miller, President and CEO of Morrow County Hospital.
Thanks to iVantage for their ongoing support and to the Ohio Flex Program (funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Federal Office of Rural Health Policy) for sharing these examples of great collaboration.