Sign Up Today to Exhibit or Sponsor at The Forum!

• Would you like to increase awareness of your service or product?
• Are you new to the healthcare marketplace and would benefit from networking with fellow peers?
• Do you have a new product, program or service?
• Interested in a way to reach healthcare professionals across the state of Colorado AND market your business?

If so, you'll want to be interested a sponsor or exhibitor at our next annual Forum brought to you by the Colorado Rural Health Center and ClinicNET! The Forum is a two-day conference that will bring together participants from all over Colorado and the surrounding states. It serves as an essential educational, training, and networking event for all safety net clinics, members of the clinic team, and other interested parties.

Opportunities to sponsor or exhibit are now available - download the form online here and email the completed form to cf@coruralhealth.org to reserve your space. Find out more about the Forum on our website.

Register Now for the ICD 10 - Keys to Successful Transitions' Workshop

Participants will learn about ICD 10, documentation, billing and coding updates, and identify practical ways to be proactively prepared for the future. This educational activity is geared towards clinicians, billing and coding staff at rural hospitals and clinics. All healthcare providers, particularly physicians, are invited to attend.

For more information or to register, please click on the location nearest you!

• Wednesday February 22nd in Rifle, Colorado
• Thursday February 23rd in Yuma, Colorado
• Tuesday March 27th in Alamosa, CO
• Wednesday March 28th in Lamar, CO

See you there!

Check out the Colorado Rural Health Center's State Bill Tracker

CRHC monitors legislation at the state and federal level to assess potential impacts on rural providers and communities. You can see which state bills CRHC is supporting, monitoring or opposing by clicking here. This link is a static link. You may save it into your favorites and open it at any time to see the bills that have been introduced which may impact the healthcare in rural Colorado, as well as to check their status and see CRHC’s position. For more information, contact Alicia Haywood.

Rural Medicine Speakers Needed for Practice Essentials Program

Do you have a family, internal medicine, pediatric or OB/GYN physician in your rural practice that enjoys public speaking, advocating for rural health and LOVES what they do? If so, please let them know we would be honored to host them at this year’s Practice Essentials program put on by COPIC and have them speak about their rural medicine experience.

Practice Essentials is a daylong workshop for Colorado’s physician residents to prepare them for work and life after residency. This will be a wonderful opportunity for your providers to motivate residents to ‘go rural’ and give you a chance to plug your own practice’s physician openings. There will be four different dates beginning in April and ending in June. Please email us at cpr@coruralhealth.org for more information. All travel and meal costs will be reimbursed by the Colorado Rural Health Center.

Tree Planting, Community Garden and Playground Grant Funding Available

The Colorado Parks & Recreation Association (CPRA) Foundation
Application deadline: March 30, 2012

CPRA is accepting applications for its 2012 tree planting and community garden grant programs. Grants of up to $500 are available and must be matched with local funding. All projects must be completed during 2012. Contact the CPRA office at 303.231.0943 or visit the CPRA website at www.cpra-web.org for an application form and detailed grant requirements. For more information contact Therese Thompson at thereset@cpra-web.org.

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Let's Play Community Construction Grants
Application deadline: March 16, 2012

Dr Pepper Snapple & KaBOOM! are soliciting applications for $15,000 Let's Play Playground Construction Grants. The grants provide funding for new playground development and are available to municipalities, neighborhood associations, schools, day care centers, and non-profit organizations without a playground or with existing equipment that is unsafe for children. Grantees will be required plan their project, and share best practices and challenges through the KaBOOM! website. You can find more information about the program and application by visiting: www.kaboom.org/grants.

Premature Twins Delivered At New Middle Park Medical Center

In a county where babies are not routinely born, a set of premature twins were delivered at the new Middle Park Medical Center in Granby on Sunday.

Babies are rarely born in Grand County due to the population, the lack of neonatal facilities and a full-time OBGYN. The last baby born in the county was in spring of 2010, when paramedics delivered a baby in the ambulance on Highway 9 at mile marker 128 en-route to Summit County. According to Grand County EMS, about one baby per-year is born here, either in a medical facility, in an ambulance, or in one instance a few years ago, on the woman's bathroom floor of the Winter Park McDonald's.

Read more about this instance of incredible teamwork between rural Middle Park Medical Center, Grand County EMS, and Children's Hospital Colorado.

Something to Celebrate

Guest Blog Post by Gretchen Hammer, executive director of the Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved

This month, All Kids Covered released Crossing the Finish Line: Achieving Meaningful Health Care Coverage and Access for All Children in Colorado. The report provides an update on the current status of meaningful health care coverage and access for children in Colorado, and describes the significant progress we have made toward getting our children the health care coverage and services they need.

The good news is that between 2008 and 2010, more than 40,000 children gained coverage, meaning that roughly 90% of kids in Colorado now have health insurance. In addition, most children in Colorado have a usual source of care ― a place where they regularly go to get their health care. We should take a moment to celebrate these great accomplishments and thank the countless people who have contributed to this progress.

Of course, there is still more work to be done. Much of the growth in coverage has come through higher enrollment in Medicaid and CHP+, which is from both policy changes to improve public programs and the economic hardships facing many Colorado families.

Additionally, the most recent estimates suggest that between 112,200 and 124,128 children in Colorado still do not have health insurance. And access to care varies across the state. While fewer than 5% of kids in the metro area, the Eastern Plains and Northwest Colorado do not have a usual source of care, nearly 1 in 13 Southwest Colorado children (7.6%) do not have a usual source of care. That’s too many!

It is not too much to ask that all of Colorado’s kids have access to the health care they need, when they need it. To build on the strong momentum of the last few years, All Kids Covered has outlined five key strategies, and we invite you to read through those on pages 15-17 of the report.

Colorado is 90% of the way there to crossing the finish line and covering all kids. It is going to take all of us working together to ensure that our children will have the coverage and care they need to have healthy and fulfilling lives.