Indiana’s Senior Senator, Richard G. Lugar was the keynote speaker for a one day program that focused on Federal and State public policy issues that impact the health of the citizens or rural Indiana. We had an unexpected sell-out crowd of 200. Your board has decided to make this an annual event. Look for the announcement of the date for the 2004 Rural Health Public Policy Forum within the next month.

     Libby Cieciura coordinated the Forum, bringing with her a wealth of experience in public affairs and event planning. Spencer Grover chaired the Policy and Legislative Committee for the 2003 forum. Through his efforts, we were able to provide periodic legislative updates while the legislature was in session. We also offered comments on several issues that were of importance to our membership—and we issued several calls to action when contacts from you were needed with your local legislators.

     On national legislation impacting rural health, we have utilized the National Rural Health Association’s services to monitor pending legislation and to alert you when members of Indiana’s congressional delegation needed to be contacted. We had seven members of the Association attend the NRHA Rural  Health Policy Institute, March 3-5 in Washington. Those of us from Indiana called on the offices of Indiana’s Senators and five of our representatives. We hope that this next year we will have at least one IRHA member from each congressional district to participate in those calls.

      We also offered a pre-conference workshop this week on Chronic Disease Management. Dr. Jim Buechler of the Midwest Center for Rural Health has led the planning for these educational programs.

      The planning for this year’s conference began immediately after last year’s conference—in fact it began on the afternoon after the conference adjourned at 1 p.m. last year, and continued throughout the year. The board made the decision to bring "inhouse" all responsibility for the conference management. We appreciated the work MERP did for the 2001 & 2002 conferences, but both MERP and IRHA agreed that, with the association having staff, it was time for the association to assume total responsibility for the conference. Jennifer Custer and Deb Barnhart, our Conference Co-Chairs, along with our Education Director, Tina Elliott, and our office Manager/Conference Registrar, Paula Johnson, have done a magnificent job of preparing for the conference we are concluding today. We look forward to reading your evaluations of this year’s conference as we begin the planning for the 2004 Conference.

      This year has been the first time that the association has had staffing to allow it to take on other projects to further rural health interests. Those have included:

1. Health Manpower Project for the West Central Indiana AHEC. Led by Laurice Newlin, an experienced nurse recruiter, the project involved an analysis of what provider groups and secondary schools in the 19-county West Central Indiana AHEC region were doing to encourage health careers, what support was needed from health care providers, and what additional resources need to be available. The project included facilitating three groups of school personnel and providers to develop recommendations for improving the co-operation to make more students aware of health careers.

2. FLEX Grant Program Evaluation for the Indiana Office of Rural Health. The association’s proposal, in response to an RFP, to evaluate how the FLEX program has been implemented in Indiana was accepted. The evaluation process involves soliciting the input of Critical Access Hospital Administrators, Physicians and EMS Coordinators as well as community leaders and other stakeholders to evaluate what has worked and to develop recommendations to improve the program.

3. Critical Access Hospital Benchmarking for the Indiana Office of Rural Health. The association has submitted a proposal to provide technical assistance to the CAH’s to develop a bench marking system for Indiana’s Critical Access Hospitals that would allow them to measure how they compare to other CAH’s on key operational and clinical measures.

4. Rural Outreach Grant. IRHA was one of several organizations that formed a consortium that was recently awarded a Rural Outreach Grant to implement an innovative tool to acquire real-time patient data on compliance and therapeutic outcomes following the office visit or hospital stay. Family Health Services (also known as Mother & Baby Care of Rush County, Inc.), Medical Care and Outcomes, a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. Health Services, Hoosier Uplands and the Indiana Rural Health Association partnered to submit the grant.