Ten-Year Outcomes: Community Health Center/Academic Medicine Partnership for Rural Family Medicine Training.

Background And Objectives: The widening gap between urban and rural health outcomes is exacerbated by physician shortages that disproportionately affect rural communities. Rural residencies are an effective mechanism to increase physician placement in rural and medically underserved areas yet are limited in number due to funding. Community health center/academic medicine partnerships (CHAMPs) can serve as a collaborative framework for expansion of academic primary care residencies outside of traditional funding models.

The Transitions Clinic Network: Post Incarceration Addiction Treatment, Healthcare, and Social Support (TCN-PATHS): A hybrid type-1 effectiveness trial of enhanced primary care to improve opioid use disorder treatment outcomes following release from jail.

Background: In 2016, at least 20% of people with opioid use disorder (OUD) were involved in the criminal justice system, with the majority of individuals cycling through jails. Opioid overdose is the leading cause of death and a common cause of morbidity after release from incarceration. Medications for OUD (MOUD) are effective at reducing overdoses, but few interventions have successfully engaged and retained individuals after release from incarceration in treatment.

Overwhelming Need, Insufficient Health Care for Justice-involved North Carolinians.

AJ's story is not unique, and it highlights the terrible personal costs of inadequately addressing the health needs of people during periods of incarceration and following their release.

Prevalence of Chronic Health Conditions Among Adults Released From the North Carolina Prison System, 2015-2016.

In the United States each year nearly 570,000 people return from state prisons to the community. Prevalence data of chronic health problems for this population are lacking, impeding planning of health care programs to serve people with chronic conditions who are re-entering the community. We used medication dispensing records as a proxy for diagnoses in assessing the prevalence of 10 major and 20 substituent health conditions among incarcerated people released from the North Carolina state prison system from July 2015 through June 2016.

Cost of Incremental Expansion of an Existing Family Medicine Residency Program.

Background And Objectives: Expanding residency training programs to address shortages in the primary care workforce is challenged by the present graduate medical education (GME) environment. The Medicare funding cap on new GME positions and reductions in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Teaching Health Center (THC) GME program require innovative solutions to support primary care residency expansion. Sparse literature exists to assist in predicting the actual cost of incremental expansion of a family medicine residency program without federal or state GME support.

Using Natural Language Processing to Extract Abnormal Results From Cancer Screening Reports.

Objectives: Numerous studies show that follow-up of abnormal cancer screening results, such as mammography and Papanicolaou (Pap) smears, is frequently not performed in a timely manner. A contributing factor is that abnormal results may go unrecognized because they are buried in free-text documents in electronic medical records (EMRs), and, as a result, patients are lost to follow-up. By identifying abnormal results from free-text reports in EMRs and generating alerts to clinicians, natural language processing (NLP) technology has the potential for improving patient care.

PURLs: a spoonful of honey helps a coughing child sleep.

Finally, we have a safe and effective alternative to OTC cough and cold remedies for young children with upper respiratory infections.

Medication documentation in a primary care network serving North Carolina medicaid patients: results of a cross-sectional chart review.

Background: Medical records that do not accurately reflect the patient's current medication list are an open invitation to errors and may compromise patient safety.

Methods: This cross-sectional study compares primary care provider (PCP) medication lists and pharmacy claims for 100 patients seen in 8 primary care practices and examines the association of congruence with demographic, clinical, and practice characteristics. Medication list congruence was measured as agreement of pharmacy claims with the entire PCP chart, including current medication list, visit notes, and correspondence sections.

Community care of North Carolina: improving care through community health networks.

The United States leads the world in health care costs but ranks far below many developed countries in health outcomes. Finding ways to narrow this gap remains elusive. This article describes the response of one state to establish community health networks to achieve quality, utilization, and cost objectives for the care of its Medicaid recipients.

Perception of racial barriers to health care in the rural South.

We assessed how commonly people in the rural South perceive racial barriers to care, the characteristics of the people among whom this perception is most common and whether this perception is associated with satisfaction with and use of health services. We analyzed telephone survey data collected in 2002-3, using weighted statistical techniques and multivariate logistic regression in analyses stratified by race. Fifty-four percent of African Americans and 23% of Whites reported that they perceive racial barriers to care in their communities.

Length of patient-physician relationship and patients' satisfaction and preventive service use in the rural south: a cross-sectional telephone study.

Background: Physicians and patients highly value continuity in health care. Continuity can be measured in several ways but few studies have examined the specific association between the duration of the patient-doctor relationship and patient outcomes. This study (1) examines characteristics of rural adults who have had longer relationships with their physicians and (2) assesses if the length of relationship is associated with patients' satisfaction and likelihood of receiving recommended preventive services.