Date of Conferral

2021

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Public Health

Advisor

Egondu Onyejekwe

Abstract

It is very difficult for certain populations to obtain access to healthcare within the United States, particularly in rural areas. Typically, individuals who live in rural areas are far less healthy than those who live in more urbanized areas. Although there have been some improvements made to ensure there is adequate health care for all, barriers still exist. A few examples of these barriers are socioeconomic status, education, and job status. In this study, adult patients from a rural Southeastern hospital were surveyed via those who came to the emergency room seeking care, and via those who came to the transitional care clinic seeking care. This study was conducted over four weeks and a total of 230 participants were surveyed. The statistical analyses that were used in this study were multiple linear regression and a t-test. While the results from this study determined that there was no statistically significant relationship between the emergency room and the transitional care clinic groups adjusting for demographics and insurance, there were some interesting factors that emerged. When comparing patients who went to the emergency room to those patients who went to the transitional care clinic, there was a difference between the numbers of emergency room visits for both groups. Both groups also had similar preexisting conditions. Future studies about healthcare access in rural areas should utilize alternative study methods to gain more expansive and reliable insights into the way that rural populations are affected by barriers to healthcare access. These future studies can also determine how ethnicity relates to healthcare barriers in rural communities and provide more insight into specific populations who reside in those communities. Thus, more open-ended approaches may enable those who live in rural communities to expand upon how the barriers to healthcare have affected them

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