Enhancing rural economic development: crafting a health care revolving loan fund.
Community development efforts in economically depressed rural areas are often hampered by poor access to health care. One barrier to rural provider availability is the difficulty of obtaining capital for rural health care infrastructure development. Commercial lending institutions are limited in their ability to respond to these needs due to traditional lending criteria--creditworthiness, equity, experience, management ability, and profits or cash flow. This paper describes a rural health care revolving loan fund crafted to address these needs for capital while addressing the goal of improving health care access in rural Arkansas. The Arkansas Rural Health Revolving Loan Fund is a model for other states interested in two processes that work synergistically: (1) increasing access to capital to strengthen the rural primary health care infrastructure and (2) making health care more economically viable by integrating the fund's efforts with those of other community development initiatives.
Stewart
M Kathryn
MK
Arkansas Southern Rural Access Program, Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, Department of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA.
Wojcik
Jan
J
Felix
Holly
H
Slayton
Deborah
D
D001131:Arkansas; D002202:Capital Financing / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003256:Community Participation; D006290:Health Planning Technical Assistance / Q000458:organization & administration; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000191:economics; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D018803:Models, Economic; D020380:Needs Assessment; D011204:Poverty Areas; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration; D019035:Rural Health Services / Q000191:economics*; D012939:Social Planning