Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 21, 1995 TAG: 9510230122
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Now, they wish a doctor were as easy to get.
The county's 2,600 population is the lowest of any county east of the Mississippi. Residents are an hour from the nearest full-service hospital, and the county has one physician, who recently announced he is retiring, said Paul Klein, treasurer of the nonprofit corporation that owns the new center.
Highland Medical Center Inc. was one of the model projects Virginia Rural Health Association speakers pointed to as an example of what a community can do at a meeting Friday in Roanoke.
But the work is far from complete.
"What we don't have is a staff," Klein said.
The new 9,800-square-foot facility in Monterey includes dental equipment, an emergency room or acute-care room, and the county's only X-ray machine. It has leased space to the county's lone physical therapist - who, for the first time, will be able to serve Medicare patients because the new building meets federal access standards. The therapist's former quarters didn't, Klein said.
And the building, which is paid for, became a reality three years after the county did a needs survey and discovered health care was the residents' main concern, Klein said.
He said the next step is to convince the federal government that Highland is a medically underserved area. If it could get that designation, then a doctor willing to come to the area could get a medical school debt forgiven in exchange.
The problem is that the federal government says for a community to qualify, it must be without a doctor, or have a population of at least 3,500 and only one doctor; Highland doesn't fit either requirement, Klein said.
Among the things he and representatives of other rural communities hope to gain from their new association is an exchange of ideas on overcoming barriers to assuring health care in their areas.
The association began in February as an advocate for rural health and has attracted a wide range of members, said Carolyn Lewis, a Dumfries native who was one of the association founders and serves as its president.
Lewis is program manager for the American Nurses Credentialing Center in Washington, but said she has family in Tazewell County and knows the problems rural areas face.
Friday's speakers included Deborah Oswalt, executive director of the Virginia Health Care Foundation, which gave Highland County $150,000 for its medical center project.
She encouraged the groups to seek grants offered by the foundation to projects that increase residents' access to health care. The foundation's average grant is $60,000, she said, but it has given up to $200,000 to a project. To be considered, a project must get 25 percent of its support from the community, and there must be a plan to sustain it after the grant ends.
The foundation also operates the Healthy Communities Loan Fund, which offers loans from First Virginia Bank at prime rate to a project that will increase the number of primary-care providers in an short of providers.
Oswalt said the foundation is especially interested in telemedicine projects.
by CNB