By Jacie Kramer, RN, BSN

The critical access hospital (CAH) was born out of the effort to protect access to healthcare in rural areas and ensure a hospital could remain viable despite the low and variable volumes that come along with the hospital’s location. A CAH is a hospital in a rural area that must meet certain requirements to qualify and be certified as a CAH. To meet these requirements, the CAH must:

• Only have 25 inpatient beds (these beds may also be used for swing-bed, or multi-use, services)
• Be more than a 35-mile drive from any other hospital
• Be more than 15 miles from any other hospital in mountainous areas or access only by secondary roads
• Provide emergency services 24/7
• Have an average length of inpatient stay of 96 hours or less.

This morning, healthcare futurist Joe Flower took the stage to kick off this year’s ACDIS conference in San Antonio  by sharing a  robust vision of healthcare’s future—from technological innovation that leads to integrations of care from providers to payers to patients.

Flower laid out a new periodic table for healthcare during his session, divided into four quadrants:

• Drivers (patient, physician, etc.)
• System
• Payment
• Technology