Community Health Commons^™

Safety Net Activities Of Independent Rural Health Clinics, David Hartley Phd, Mha, John A. Gale Ms, Al Leighton Ba, Stuart Bratesman Mpp

Rural Health Clinics

Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) are an important part of the rural health care infrastructure as they provide a wide range of primary care services to the rural residents of 45 states. Since RHCs are located in underserved rural areas and serve vulnerable populations, many consider them safety net providers. In this paper we explore whether and to what extent independent RHCs are serving a safety net role, or have the capacity to serve that role. We address this question through a telephone survey of 392 randomly selected independent RHCs. Response rate for the survey was 93%. We investigated whether and …