Essentia Institute Of Rural Health

Programs: Essentia institute of rural health (eirh) is created and operated exclusively for charitable, educational, scientific, and religious purposes. More specifically, eirh is created and organized to assist and coordinate activities of facilities for health care, health care education, and research. Eirh supports clinical and health services research across populations served by essentia health in wisconsin, minnesota, north dakota and idaho. Eirh's strengths include access to essentia health's large rural patient population. Its organized group practice network covers a 2 million-person service area, of which approximately 40 percent are essentia health patients. Essentia health's electronic health record integration has led to common standards of care, improved access to primary/specialized services, enhanced quality/safety, and better communication with patients. An electronic data warehouse pulls data from all electronic health records. Essentia health's electronic health record integration provides an important foundation for eirh and its focus on rural health services research. Ultimately this improves the health and well-being of rural residents located within the essentia health service area. During the fiscal year ended june 30, 2017, eirh received $840k in external contract support related to clinical trials. Eirh researchers submitted 21 new grant applications to federal/state agencies, non-profit organizations/foundations and managed over 45 research grants during the fiscal year.

eirh's education division helps prepare a collaborative, rural ready primary care workforce by strategically organizing, developing and providing clinical experience opportunities for residents and medical/health science students enrolled in accredited programs. Eirh has a management services agreement with the duluth graduate medical education council (dgmec). Under this agreement, eirh manages the operations of the duluth family medicine residency program and employs its 25 family medicine residents. This residency program is a key tool in preparing physicians for rural practice, as well as a crucial recruitment pool for essentia health.

eirh supports continuing education and professional development by housing a continuing education program for practicing physicians, nurses and pharmacists using distance-learning technologies, and operates an electronic medical library that provides services and resources to a wide range of clinical staff.