Rural Health Toolkit

The amount of ground covered in this area regarding rural health is considerable. This area focuses on general legislation that affects rural health care and on methods of finding additional information.

What's New/Updates

• Recent federal legislation relevant to rural health
  http://www.nal.usda.gov/orhp/legislate.htm 
   

Bills and Legislation

• Balanced Budget Act 1997
  The Balanced Budget Act affects hospitals both in rural and urban areas. Resources in this section focus on those implications and on the application of the BBA regulations.
  
  
• HealthLaw.com's BBA Page
  Links to government information, full-text of the BBA, information about implications for Medicare, Medicaid and CHIPS.
  http://www.healthlaw.org/bba.shtml 
  
  
• Full Text of the BBA
  http://www.healthlaw.org/bba.shtml#fulltext 
  http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.2015.ENR: 
  
  
• House Speaker's Balanced Budget page
  http://speakernews.house.gov/budget.htm 
  
  
• BBA Medicaid Provisions
  http://www.healthlaw.org/bba.shtml#Medicaid 
  
  
• BBA Medicare Provisions
  http://www.healthlaw.org/bba.shtml#medicare
  
  
• BBA Child Health Provisions
  http://www.healthlaw.org/bba.shtml#child 
  
  
• HFCA BBA Regulations
  http://www.healthlaw.org/bba.shtml#regs 
  
  
• Office of Rural Health Policies
  Rural Implications of the Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP Balanced Budget Refinement Act of 1999: A Rural Analysis of the Health Policy Provisions
  http://www.rupri.org/pubs/archive/reports/P99-11/index.html 

• HIPAA - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act 1996. 
  Designed to improve continuity of health care both for businesses and individuals, guarantee the availability of health coverage for small employers, and prevent discrimination in enrollment and premiums against employees and dependents based on health status.
  
  
• Health Care Financing Administration
  Page provides links to bulletins, regulations, correction notices and eligibility certificates.
  http://www.hcfa.gov/medicaid/HIPAA/usergroups/sreg.asp 
  
  
• Full text of HIPAA 1996 in .pdf format
  http://www.hcfa.gov/medicaid/HIPAA/source/HIPAASTA.pdf 
  

Medical Privacy 

• Medical Records Institute. 
  Information about the on-going search for standards for the electronic patient record, with an emphasis on insuring privacy. 
  Site is still being developed but will have legislative information when complete.
  http://www.medrecinst.com/ 
  
  
• Electronic Privacy Information Center
  Site contains links to recent news, information on medical privacy law and policy, laws, research, along with other information. 
  http://www.epic.org/privacy/medical/ 
  
  
• Office for Civil Rights 
  Proposed (as of November 1999) regulation to protect the privacy of health care information. Links to .pdf files.
  http://aspe.hhs.gov/admnsimp/nprm/pvclist.htm 
  
  
  

Search Tools

• Medline Literature Searches
  Click on the links below to search the National Library of Medicine's Medline database for recent print articles on topics pertaining to rural health and legislation.
  
  
• Rural Health AND (Texas OR Americas) AND Legislation
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?
  
  
• Rural Health OR Rural Health Services OR Rural Hospitals) AND United States - Limited to past year
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?
  
  
• Google - Government Search Engine
  Searches government websites. Enter terms without any joining words (ie - AND, OR, etc. will be ignored). Click SEARCH. 
  http://www.google.com/unclesam/ 
  
  
• Northern Light - Search Engine
  Enter search terms, click SEARCH. Results will be shown on the right hand side of the screen. Notice that NorthernLight has 
  organized the results into folders (along the left-hand column). Click on a folder to see the subset of your results contained within.
  http://www.northernlight.com 
  
  
• Texas State Legislature - Bill Search
  Allows searching by author/sponsor, bill number, committee, subjects, or a combination of these methods.
  http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlo/billsrch/search.htm 
  
  
• Thomas - U.S. Congress on the Internet
  Allows searching by bill no., phrase. Includes current and previous congresses, committee information, congressional records, 
  and legislation (bill summaries and status, texts, etc.). 
  http://thomas.loc.gov 
  
  http://thomas.loc.gov/tfaqs/homepage.html
  [For help searching Thomas, look at the Frequently Asked Questions page]

Publications

• Office of Rural Health Policies
  Topical listing of ORHP's print publications as well as ordering information.
  http://www.nal.usda.gov/orhp/publist.htm