Improving Access to Safe Anesthetic Care in Rural Communities
Rural healthcare comes with its own set of unique challenges. CCI understands these challenges and our years of experience have taught us how to best support rural facilities and the patients they serve. Since 2004, we have worked exclusively with rural hospitals to provide quality anesthesia services. Improving access to safe anesthetic care in rural communities is our mission. If your anesthesia department is struggling to meet the surgical demands of your community, we can help.
Challenges of Anesthesia Care in Rural Communities
In rural communities, hospitals have historically been a mainstay of secondary care. In the United States, rural hospitals represent more than half of all hospitals, providing essential access to inpatient, outpatient and emergency medical services. Responding effectively to trauma can be challenging for rural hospitals that are deprived of anesthesia and surgically skilled first responders. When hospitals lack the ability to offer care for trauma, their scope is reduced to the small footprint of outpatient care and medical transport services. The resulting decline in revenue diminishes the hospital’s ability to recruit and hire dedicated anesthesia providers.
How CCI Anesthesia Can Help Break the Cycle
When hospitals face anesthesia staffing challenges, it limits service lines, which strains the budget and ultimately impacts the hospital’s ability to meet the surgical needs of the community. Aside from recruiting and paying for anesthesia providers, there are three overarching challenges for providing quality care and attracting talent in a community hospital:
Building and Maintaining Competence in Procedural Skills
In a low-volume program, building and maintaining competence in procedural skills can be a real challenge. CCI can help by providing leadership and mentorship from our experienced Regional Medical Officers, Regional Clinical Officers and Chiefs of Anesthesia. We also support advancement opportunities in hospital practice leadership for anesthesiologists and CRNAs.
Building Collaborative Relationships Between Care Providers
In rural settings, it is essential for surgeons, anesthesia providers and other perioperative team members to have collaborative working relationships. By offering interim OR Director staffing to ensure seamless perioperative leadership transitions, CCI is able to help foster productive relationships among care providers.
Delivering Consistent, High-Quality Care
Regardless of the geographic location, timely and consistent care is important and can save lives. Not only should patients be able to count on receiving care, but they should feel confident in the quality of care they are getting. CCI offers real-time reporting of best-in-class perioperative KPIs powered by Merlin to keep administrators in tune with quality metrics. Additionally, we offer quality management and compliance benchmarking through the CCI Institute of Excellence. And, since it is always best to have a boots-on-the-ground approach to compliance monitoring, your dedicated CCI Regional Medical Officer, Regional Clinical Officers, Regional Director of Operations and Chief of Anesthesia will keep a constant watch on your perioperative services.
Your Facility Deserves the Best Anesthesia Providers
Rural communities deserve the best of the best when it comes to anesthesia providers. That’s why ordinary, average or mediocre anesthesia providers do not make the cut at CCI Anesthesia. Independent practitioners who thrive without requiring outside instruction are ideal for work in rural settings. Our providers are extremely proficient in performing all types of anesthesia care at every level of patient acuity. It takes a special anesthesia provider to fit the mold for delivering rural care, but we know how to find them and place them in communities where they are needed most.
We’re available to start co-managing your perioperative services in ways that enhance value and build surgical volume quickly. Call us today at 800.494.3948 to learn more.