Principles of Data Reorganization for Rural Health

Below are seven principles we propose for navigating the data needs of rural healthcare provision. These principles reflect a synthesis of lived experiences of rural general practitioners and health services researchers:

1. Data must be organized to allow the linkage of rural health services with population outcomes.
2. Data should support the evaluation of local innovation in health services provision to meet the population need  for appropriate quality improvement programs and projects.
3. Data must be available within a reasonable time frame, ideally less than three months
4. Data must support patient privacy while privileging system function and improvement.
5. Core data indicators need to be maintained across the system and local innovation needs to be supported.
6. Data need to be used to scale and spread system improvement.
7. Data need to be organized to respect rural generalism and enhanced skills.

Barriers like social, racial, economic, and physical factors can affect people’s access to healthcare and health outcomes.¹⁰ Understanding these obstacles can help to better match health care providers, centres, and preventive services to the community’s needs. Location intelligence, such as using Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, can also help identify gaps in accessibility and opportunities for intervention. Consequently, by fusing demographics and location intelligence, it becomes possible to understand the unique healthcare needs of diverse communities and respond to them more effectively. This approach can make health care provision more population-centric, identifying the areas where healthcare needs are most significant and how best to address them.

Along with this data, research and innovation need to be encouraged within a quality improvement framework in order to support the rapid evolution of the healthcare system. Rural has a number of advantages associated with small population size and the self-defining isolation which provide a remarkable opportunity to evaluate natural experiments and innovation in health service delivery. If a rural community’s health services are not functioning, the opportunity to introduce radical change is present. Interventions like implementing alternative payment models for physicians, developing innovative applications of virtual care, introducing new providers like physician assistants, and bolstering rural team education can all be piloted and evaluated with relative ease and validity. Developing and implementing these kinds of healthcare changes can allow rural communities to build systems of care that may be more responsive and resilient to ecosystem disruptions like COVID-19 and climate change.

In addition, experts in place are important and health service innovation at the local level in rural communities needs to be guided by local providers and local community representatives working together in partnership. This expertise will also support the identification of vulnerable populations within the catchment and potentially provide strategic support as necessary. Expertise in research methods, management of bias, and feasibility must be included in the partnership so that the potential for optimizing the learning system can be realized.