Rural Spotlight

Rebuilding Staffing, Surgery & Behavioral Health: 5 Resources for Healthcare Leaders This Week

May 27, 2026

Rebuilding Staffing, Surgery & Behavioral Health: 5 Resources for Healthcare Leaders This Week

The most useful resources for healthcare executives right now tend to share one trait: they come from leaders who’ve already done the work and can speak to the specifics. Not the framework or the guiding principle, but the financial model that got board approval, the governance change that actually held, the program that scaled past the first cohort.

This week’s five Becker’s Healthcare resources lean into that level of detail. Spanning workforce strategy, OR operations and behavioral health access, each features executives walking through what their teams did inside their own organizations and what it took to make the change stick.

Click Here to Read More

MRHA Webinar: Nurse Call and Wander Management Systems for Rural Healthcare, July 16

May 27, 2026

MRHA Webinar: Nurse Call and Wander Management Systems for Rural Healthcare, July 16

Join ECC and TekTone for an in-depth look at modern nurse call and wander management solutions designed to meet the unique needs of rural healthcare facilities. This session will showcase the latest Tek-CARE technologies, including Tek-CARE400 GEN3 nurse call, Tek-CARE700 Wander Management, and the expanding Tek-CARE ecosystem of workflow and alerting tools.

Participants will learn how fully integrated wireless pendants, wired audio-visual nurse call systems, resident wander management, and alert integration can operate simultaneously on a single platform. The presentation will highlight how these solutions help rural facilities improve staff efficiency, enhance resident satisfaction, and modernize infrastructure in a cost-effective and scalable way.

Designed for a wide range of care environments-from small care homes to large hospitals – TekTone nurse call systems are UL® listed and customizable to meet regulatory and operational requirements across multiple settings.

Cost: Free

When: Thursday, July 16, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

MRHA Webinar: Digital Lifelines: Smarter Telemedicine and AI Use, July 9

May 27, 2026

MRHA Webinar: Digital Lifelines: Smarter Telemedicine and AI Use, July 9

Join the Missouri Rural Health Association (MRHA) for an engaging session exploring how telemedicine and artificial intelligence are reshaping healthcare delivery in rural communities. As Missouri expands access to telehealth services through recent legislation and healthcare organizations increasingly adopt AI-powered tools, providers face new opportunities alongside evolving legal, operational, and compliance considerations.

This webinar will examine common sources of malpractice and employer liability in telehealth, best practices for provider communication and care handoffs, and emerging legal risks tied to AI use in healthcare. Through real-world case examples and practical guidance, participants will gain strategies to help reduce risk, strengthen documentation practices, and responsibly integrate new technologies into patient care.

Cost: Free

When: Thursday, July 9, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

MRHA Webinar: The Rural Health Clinic Advantage: Leveraging the RHC Designation for Financial Success, June 25

May 27, 2026

MRHA Webinar: The Rural Health Clinic Advantage: Leveraging the RHC Designation for Financial Success, June 25

Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) play a vital role in expanding access to care in underserved areas – and they offer significant reimbursement advantages. However, many providers are not fully leveraging the opportunities that RHC status can provide. This session will focus on the financial benefits of becoming an RHC, how to determine if the designation is the right fit for your organization and how to optimize these opportunities.

Attendees will gain a clear understanding of the key reimbursement mechanisms tied to RHC status, including cost report strategies, billing and coding requirements and how to avoid common pitfalls that lead to lost revenue. Through real-life examples from RHCs across the country, we’ll highlight how clinics have improved reimbursement, enhanced sustainability, and brought more value to their communities by leveraging their RHC designation more effectively. Whether you’re exploring the potential of becoming an RHC or looking to strengthen the financial performance of an existing clinic, this session offers practical insight you can act on.

Cost: Free

When: Thursday, June 25, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

MRHA Webinar: Missouri Rural Food Access Partnership, June 4

May 27, 2026

MRHA Webinar: Missouri Rural Food Access Partnership, June 4

June marks the completion of the second year of the Missouri Rural Food Access Partnership (MRFAP) grant, and this session will provide a comprehensive update on the progress made toward strengthening healthy food access across rural Missouri.

Participants will learn about advancements toward creating a statewide healthy food financing initiative and hear highlights from key projects and partner contributions.

This webinar will also introduce the first draft of the Missouri Good Food Charter – developed by MRFAP members to outline the most urgent food system priorities necessary to ensure all Missourians can access nutritious, affordable food.

Attendees will have the opportunity to explore ways to get involved and help shape the future of rural food access efforts.

Cost: Free

When: Thursday, June 4, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

MRHA Virtual Learning Session: Local Health Department Capacity, Public Health Priorities, and Community Health Workers: Two Studies on LHD Capacity and the Potential of Community Health Workers, May 28

May 27, 2026

MRHA Virtual Learning Session: Local Health Department Capacity, Public Health Priorities, and Community Health Workers: Two Studies on LHD Capacity and the Potential of Community Health Workers, May 28

*Please note that the topic for this webinar has been updated. The previously scheduled presentation, “A Systems Approach to Preparing the Health Workforce for Social Determinants of Health,” has been replaced with this session.

This webinar uses national data from the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) National Profile of Health Departments survey to explore organizational capacity in local health departments (LHDs) and how it relates to foundational public health services (FPHS) capabilities and health screenings in LHDs. There is substantial variation between LHDs in different contexts in terms of their organizational capacity, and capacity can impact what LHDs can accomplish.

Two studies will be discussed. First, you will examine differences in LHDs’ FPHS activities between expenditure levels, full time equivalent positions, and local population size. Second, you will examine health screening activities among LHDs who employ a community health worker (CHW), a physician, both, or neither. Capacity matters a great deal for what LHDs can do, but LHDs may be able to act strategically to increase capacity and thus their activities.

Cost: Free

When: Thursday, May 28, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

On-Demand Webinar: The Hidden Barrier to AI: Why Legacy Systems and App Sprawl are Slowing Healthcare Innovation

May 27, 2026

On-Demand Webinar: The Hidden Barrier to AI: Why Legacy Systems and App Sprawl are Slowing Healthcare Innovation

Healthcare organizations are investing heavily in AI and digital innovation – yet many are discovering that legacy systems, redundant applications and fragmented infrastructure are slowing progress. Before scaling AI or advanced analytics, many healthcare IT, digital and compliance leaders are realizing they must address decades of accumulated technical debt.

This session will explore how healthcare IT leaders are approaching application rationalization and legacy modernization as strategic enablers of AI, cloud transformation and operational efficiency. Speakers will share practical approaches for evaluating legacy systems, reducing application sprawl and aligning platforms to support the next generation of healthcare technologies.

Key learning points:

  • Why legacy systems and application sprawl are emerging as major barriers to AI and digital transformation,
  • Practical frameworks for evaluating and rationalizing healthcare application portfolios,
  • How leading health systems are balancing modernization with operational stability,
  • Strategies for aligning infrastructure, security and governance when retiring legacy systems, and
  • Where CIOs should start when building a modern digital foundation for AI

Click Here to Download this On-Demand Webinar

Whitepaper: The Hidden Cost of the Status Quo: Why Healthcare Safety is the Defining Strategic Imperative for 2026

May 27, 2026

Whitepaper: The Hidden Cost of the Status Quo: Why Healthcare Safety is the Defining Strategic Imperative for 2026

When clinicians worry about their safety, the impact reaches far beyond a single incident. Confidence drops, reporting suffers, turnover rises and operational strain spreads across the organization.

This healthcare safety report shows why best-in-class hospitals are treating safety as a strategic priority. It connects worker safety to workforce retention, trust and operational performance, giving leaders a clearer view of what is driving risk and what can improve outcomes.

The findings are drawn from an online survey of 1,014 healthcare employees across clinical, operational and executive roles. The results are hard to ignore – Nearly 85% of survey respondents have personally experienced a safety incident during their careers. More than 20% (1 in 5) have been involved in incidents that escalated to physical violence, and 76% of healthcare workers consider personal safety a daily concern.

One system that adopted connected safety technology saw violent incidents decline by 30% within six months, while incident reporting increased by 50%.

For leaders focused on sustaining care delivery, this report offers a practical look at how proactive safety programs can support both staff protection and organizational performance.

Download the report to learn:

  • How safety affects retention, trust and operational resilience,
  • What front-line trends reveal about workplace violence today,
  • Where proactive safety programs are driving measurable change, and
  • Why reporting culture matters for long-term improvement.

Click Here to Download this Whitepaper

Webinar: Why Dashboards Alone Aren’t Fixing Patient Flow, June 24

May 27, 2026

Webinar: Why Dashboards Alone Aren’t Fixing Patient Flow, June 24

Most hospitals have invested heavily in visibility in the form of dashboards, daily huddle reports, capacity snapshots and more. Yet boarded emergency department patients, delayed discharges and capacity bottlenecks remain stubbornly familiar.

The problem is rarely a lack of data. It is the gap between what the data shows and what teams can act on in time. By the time a daily report surfaces a bottleneck, the bed is already full, the discharge has already slipped, and the ED is already holding patients overnight.

Baptist Health Arkansas decided to close that gap.

Cody Walker, President of Baptist Health Medical Center-North Little Rock, will share how Baptist moved past visibility into action by embedding predictive intelligence and automation into core workflows. The phased, data-driven approach delivered a 25% reduction in avoidable opportunity days and 525 fewer boarded ED patients per month.

Learnings include:

  • Where dashboards fall short and what replaces them,
  • How predictive intelligence and automation cut avoidable delays,
  • The phased model behind Baptist’s measurable throughput gains, and
  • How real-time collaboration changes front-line decision-making.

Cost: Free

When: Wednesday, June 24, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register

Webinar: From Alarm Management to Personalized Care: Turning clinical Surveillance Data into Safer Pediatric Long-Term Care, June 25

May 27, 2026

Webinar: From Alarm Management to Personalized Care: Turning clinical Surveillance Data into Safer Pediatric Long-Term Care, June 25

Pediatric long-term residential care demands continuous visibility across dispersed neighborhoods, especially for children moving on and off mechanical ventilation.

Elizabeth Seton Children’s Center expanded ventilator beds in its home-like environment and adopted a customizable clinical surveillance platform integrating ventilator and vital-sign data into near-real-time dashboards and alerts. Personalized alarm limits, smart alert conditions and remote triage help teams cut non-actionable alarms, unnecessary room entries and PPE cycles. Trend reports drive objective, interdisciplinary clinical conversations and tailored interventions for patterns like desaturations or temperature instability, while custom reporting locates ventilators and streamlines preventive maintenance.

ESCC leaders will share practical lessons on governance, customization and resident-centered care.

Key Learning Objectives:

  • Describe how customizable surveillance supports monitoring across dispersed pediatric long-term care, with ventilator data integrated into near-real-time dashboards/alerts.
  • Explain how personalized alarm limits, smart alert logic and remote triage cut non-actionable alarms and room entries while supporting staff efficiency and resident safety.
  • Identify how surveillance reporting and trend reviews drive objective, interdisciplinary clinical conversations and personalized interventions.

Cost: Free

When: Thursday, June 25, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Click Here to Register