To successfully meet the needs of rural communities, a partnership must continually be nurtured. This partnership includes both academic medical center faculty as well as community faculty, academic medical center institutions along with rural institutions. This partnership needs support from federal, state and private sources to continue the funding of rural-based medical education. The AAFP supports the regionalization of health care resources in rural areas in order to ensure access to appropriate health care services. The regionalization of rural health care services results in the formation of rural health networks, which are variably defined organizations that directly or indirectly provide a set of coordinated health and health-related services specifically targeted to the community served.
Networks result from the development of cooperative agreements among service providers.
They are governed locally by coordinating bodies that may include physicians, other health care and social service providers, local governments, payers, and consumers drawn from the service area of the network. Rural health networks allow rural communities to improve the efficiency and coordination of health care services and are an important means by which rural family physicians can address the endemic problems of recruitment, retention, and professional and social isolation. The success of health care networks hinges on their being individually designed to meet the specific needs of the community served. No one network model can meet the diverse needs of all rural communities. The design and operation of a rural health care network requires the active involvement of a broad cross section of the community.